Teachers to be prosecuted for forging salary upgrade documents

The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission is set to prosecute hundreds of teachers across the country said to have fraudulently secured salary upgrades using fake certificates.

The Commission says it has conducted a detailed audit of the payroll and found strong evidence implicating several teachers in schools nationwide.

Chief Executive of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission said some of the teachers who presented the forged documents would soon be in trouble.

“We don’t know how massive the situation is across the country, but at least the work that we have done proves that there are a few fake certificates and non-certificate holders who have even be upgraded to levels that you don’t expect them to be.” Mr Smith Graham said.

He said the increased but falsely acquired salary upgrades have become a cost to the state.

“The time has come that people [teachers] would have to be prosecuted,” he said.

Detailing how the situation would be resolved in the interim, he said the teachers who got their salary upgrades using the fake documents would first have their names deleted from the payroll.

“Deletion or suspension of the names from the payroll will be done in November to ensure that nobody suffers unduly,” he said.

Mr Graham said a committee chaired by him and represented by the Ghana Education Service, teacher unions, the audit service, Ministry of Finance and the Controller and Accountant General’s department are working to ensure that deleted names can smoothly be reinstated when the need arises.

Credit: Myjoyonline