Assam to weed out ‘ghost schools and teachers’: Education minister Ranoj Pegu

Guwahati, July 10: State Education minister Ranoj Pegu on Sunday said after “ghost students”, Assam is planning to weed out “ghost schools and teachers”.

Talking to media persons, Pegu said, “Special grants to schools which failed to provide complete information about staff have been put on hold, with salaries of such employees to be stopped in the next two months,”.

“We had already detected ghost students. Now, there could be ghost schools and teachers. It is done to obtain government funds for various purposes. Around 4.50 lakh ghost students in government and private schools were detected in the state in June during reconciliation of enrolment figures with that of the previous year,” he said.

Pegu informed that over 11,000 lower and upper primary government schools have failed to provide complete data of their staff, comprising both teaching and non-teaching, as sought by the department.

“Now we are putting on hold the grants. If they don’t give the details, salaries may also have to be stopped from August or September,” he said.

He said, “If they can’t provide even those few details, the government cannot pay them a salary out of public money. We are accountable to the people. While 2.08 lakh teaching and non-teaching employees of these schools have uploaded their details, about 35,500 are yet to do it,”.

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