Govt saves 930m/- from ghost students’ pool

 

THE government has uncovered a total of 65,198 ghost students in primary and secondary schools across the country, thus saving 931.3m/- which would have been allocated for the phantom students for 2016/2017 fiscal year.

The Minister of State, President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government, Mr George Simbachawene, said that out of 65,198 non-existing students, 52,783 have been framed in primary schools and 12,415 in secondary schools. 

 

Mr Simbachawene said that the verification exercise was conducted in all regions in the country following the directives issued by the President’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Government), to all regional administrative secretaries in the Mainland.

“They were directed to conduct verification on the number of students in primary and secondary schools by comparing reports issued in March 2016 when they filled some questioneerforms on statistics for nursery, primary and secondary schools and students in attendance,” Minister Simbachawene said. He said before the verification, the reports showed that there were 9,746,534 pupils in primary schools and 1,483,872 students in secondary schools.

“After the verification exercise conducted in September, this year, it was discovered that there were 9,690,038 pupils in primary schools and 1,429,314 in secondary schools,” he pointed out.

He said the assessment indicated that there was no thorough explanation given on the discrepancy regarding 52,783 pupils in primary schools and 12,415 in secondary schools. He added that the figures both in primary and secondary schools implied the presence of ghost students.

Mr Simbachawene said that if the ‘framed students’ were not earthed, they would have cost the government 931.3m/- which could have been allocated to the respective schools for the students’ benefits.

He noted that ghost students in primary schools would have cost the nation 527.8m/- and 403.4m/- erroneously to the secondary schools respectively. Mr Simbachawene clarified that the issue of ‘imagined students’ surfaced when the government started to provide subsidy to primary and secondary schools.

He said that the government has been allocating 27bn/- monthly as subsidies for schools’ operations and allowance for headmasters, only for some teachers to become dishonest and raise the number of their students and take shares of ‘framed’ students.

He named the regions leading in compiling ghost students as Tabora (12,112), Ruvuma (7,743), Mwanza (7,349), Dar es Salaam (4,096), Kagera (4,763), Rukwa (4,054), Singida (3,239), Kilimanjaro (2,594), Kigoma (2,323) and Njombe (2,307), Simiyu (2.081) and Arusha (1,923).

Others in the list included Mara (1,855), Tanga (1,378), Geita (1,281), Morogoro (1,172), Mtwara (882), Mbeya (786), Shinyanga (695), Songwe (512), Manyara (330), Dodoma (284), Lindi (281), Coast (187), Iringa (161) and Katavi (0).