Assam is planning to weed out “ghost schools and teachers” after wiping out “ghost students”, state education minister Ranoj Pegu said on Sunday.
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, he said.
Addressing a press conference here, Pegu said, “We had already detected ghost students. Now, there could be ghost schools and teachers.”
Ghost students, schools and teachers are those who exist only on paper. 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.
Pegu said 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.
“The information was to be uploaded on a specific portal ‘Shikshya Setu’. After cross-checking with our records, we have found that 11,483 schools have not provided details of all staff.
“Until they upload all the details, we will put on hold annual school grants and sports and physical education grants for 2023-24,” he said.