. Tukombe
By JAMES KUNDA –
ABOUT 400 teachers countrywide have been blocked from accessing their October monthly salaries due to their possession of forged grade12 certificates.
Police have meanwhile cast doubt on reports that a Nyimba school teacher who committed suicide last weekend was driven to the action after drawing a blank at the bank when he went to get his October pay.
General Education Permanent Secretary Henry Tukombe said in an interview yesterday that the number of those exposed as having fake qualifications had risen from 500 to 658 in the continuing verification process.
Of those, 399 teachers were blocked from accessing their October pay.
He said the Government was yet to establish whether or not the remaining 259 teachers were on the public or private payroll and that if discovered that they were on Government payroll, they too would also be blocked from accessing their wages.
“This process is being undertaken to sanitise and clean up the teachers’ payroll system because education is not a charitable sector and we want our school-going pupils to access the best form of education because they are our future leaders,” Mr Tukombe said.
He alleged that the national teacher unions were also involved in the syndicate, hence the enhanced calls by the organisations to give the teachers with forged qualifications an amnesty.
Mr Tukombe said this, however, could not be possible as primary and secondary school-going children could not be subjected to accessing substandard education.
He said the Government was certain that more culprits would be identified in the process as beyond the 658 with forged secondary school leaving qualifications, three had already been caught with ‘suspect’ tertiary papers.
On the suicide teacher of Nyimba, police said their information was that the man, identified as Ben Biemba, 38, of Airstrip township who taught at the government Machinka Primary School in the same area, took his life after a marital dispute.
Police spokesperson Esther Katongo said in a statement yesterday that Mr Biemba, who committed suicide by hanging himself to a tree using an aluminium wire last Saturday at 06:00 hours.
