The Kwara State Government on Thursday said it lost over 400 million Naira since 2014 due to the illegal recruitment of 516 employees by the State Teaching Service Commission.

In 2015, the Kwara State Government directed the Commission to employ secondary school teachers in the discipline of Mathematics and English to cater for the shortfall across the state.

The Chairman of the panel, Yusuf Daibu, while presenting the panel’s report to the State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed said the panel discovered that the illegal employment of 965 employees instead of the 449 approved by the governor in 2014.

The mandate to recruit 449 teachers was, however, said to have been increased in flagrant abuse of the procedure which prompted the state government to set up an administrative panel of enquiry to determine the actual number of teachers employed.

Mr Daibu said the selection and recruitment were “haphazardly done as there were no records of shortlisted candidates or record of an interview panel that should have formed the basis of the final list of those recruited.”

The panel recommended, among other things, that the recruitment should be reviewed and limited to the 449 by considering “the genuine need of the Teaching Service Commission for additional hands especially in Mathematics, the core sciences and English language.”

The panel also recommended the review of the enabling law establishing the Teaching Service Commission to take care of some structural defects and that the oversight function of the state ministry of education and human capital development on the commission should be enforced.

Governor Ahmed said the panel is part of his administration’s efforts in boosting the quality of education in the state through judicious use of resources while ensuring that the right quality manpower is recruited.

A staff of the teaching service commission, who refused to disclose his name, while reacting on the submission of the report noted that even though the public is eagerly awaiting what would be the final outcome of the report, he however pleaded with the governor to temper justice with mercy by not throwing the already employed to the labour market. (Channels TV)

•Photo shows Kwara Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed.

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