A large number of teachers who were said to have been teaching at public schools without pay for some time in the past have entered government pay-rolled employees.
At an ostentatious ceremony held at the Presidency on Tuesday, President Muse Bihi Abdi, himself, ordered that 954 teachers found to have been teaching at 1081 schools across the country be given permanent positions at the ministry effective from that day.
Besides the President, the Vice President, Abdirahman Abdullahi Ismail ‘Zeili’i’, the ex-minister of education, Prof. Yassin Mohamoud Hiir ‘Faratoon’, the Somaliland Civil Service Commission Chairman, Sharmarke Muhumed Gheelle, and a number of other high-ranking government officials attended.
What is not explained, however, is why the SCSC did never publicize the fact before. It was only in early October that the Commission announced that an audit it had carried out nation-wide had found out that 1626 positions out of 6448 were, in fact, ghost ‘employees’. Out of that number, 954 were found on ministry of education payrolls – a number that did not physically exist but whose salaries were being drawn fraudulently.
Strangely, neither the government nor the SCSC charged anybody on the grand theft of public resources.
More bizarrely, a million-dollar-question, now, remains ‘how come the exact number of SCSC’s ghost-teachers of yesterday have turned into teachers who have been selflessly teaching at schools without pay within a month? That positions which were said to have opened for fair competition are no longer so, suddenly finding ‘claimers’?
Critics believe the explanation is nothing but another excuse to shovel/provide more employment opportunities for certain areas, more favored sections of the society since the President came to power.
None will be surprised if the remaining 672 positions slated as other ghost-employees at other ministries become another lot to be gallantly rescued from unpaying employment.
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