Zambia National Union of Teachers – ZNUT has called on the government to first investigate the Human Resources (HR) officers who are responsible for the alleged issue of overpayments to teachers before before any recovery is initiated.
ZNUT spokesperson Godwin Maseka said the HR officers who credited these allowances that were not due to these civil servants should be investigated first as to why they gave allowances when they were not supposed to.
In an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, Maseka said the government should hold the idea of recovering the allowances from the affected civil servants in till investigations are done because the thought is there is more to the recovery of the funds and why they were given in that manner.
He further added that the payroll system in the ministry of Education is porous, there is more that needs to be done. He said there is a serious mismatch. He said there is a procedure that is followed for teachers to be awarded certain types of allowances and is approved by the Head Teacher of a respective school.
The ZNUT spokeperson stated that the unions desire is for the Ministry of Education and Finance to go on the ground and ascertain the abnormalities in the education sector, so that as they sit to recover the allowances, it is well appreciated.
He has since urged the respective ministries to wait until investigations are instituted and concluded before the move to the recovery of the allowance funds is taken.
The ministry of education is on the move to recover about K209 Million that was accredited to Teachers and some civil servants as funds for different allowances among them is , housing, rural hardship, remote hardship, double class and responsibility allowances to about 9,444 civil servants in the education sector.
This issue has attracted the attention of almost all the teachers unions and they have called for the investigation of the human resource offers. Any move to recover these funds should be put on hold until investigations are instituted and concluded. Any abrupt recoveries risks affecting the general welfare and morale of various affected teachers.
