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Teachers’ corruption scheme exposed
A group of teachers, which allegedly used government school facilities to secretly run an illegal private school business for themselves, has been exposed and suspended.
Moamogwe Primary School Head, Kgosietsile Mhauli, and four of his teachers, were last week put on suspension pending investigations by both the Ministry of Education and the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) for enrolling 541 undocumented foreign students illegally in a school with a total enrolment of 1 436 students.
The disgraced school management, which comprises Acting Deputy School Head, Kebonyetsala Setlhoka; Head of Department, Infant Ratsatsi; Senior Teachers, Barati Osenyeng; and Grace Othayang, have been accused of turning the school into their personal feeding trough by accepting bribes to enrol children of desperate foreigners without proper immigration documents.
The latest development emerged after the Ministry of Education and Skills Development got a tip-off that foreign students were admitted in large numbers for exorbitant kickbacks and without proper registration documents by the school.
Information gathered by this publication has so far revealed that while Primary school fees is P200 per term and P60 development fee, the suspended group had been fleecing foreigners between P1 200 and P4 500 per term per child in bribes for enrolment for the past five years.
The illegal business was reportedly flourishing and booming to a point where the enterprising teachers engaged agents to look for more illegal foreign parents to register their children at Moamogwe in order to line their pockets some more.
According to a source at the school, the corruption and rot ran so deep that the group went further to use public school facilities to provide private tutoring lessons for a fee to students who did not school at Moamogwe.
“Another charge these teachers are facing is of hiring out the sports ground and school hall as another income stream for themselves. Some even misused the Parent Teachers Association funds,” a concerned source has revealed.
Meanwhile, news reaching this publication has indicated that, since the suspension, almost half of the students have not been coming to school to avoid being caught without immigration documents and possibly face deportation.
Confirming the bizarre episode, the Minister of Education and Skills Development, Douglas Letsholathebe, said that it was true there were some teachers who were on suspension a Moamogwe Primary School.
“It is a fresh matter which the Ministry is still investigating and I cannot comment further except to confirm that some are serving suspension pending investigation,” added the minister.
Efforts to get a comment from Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) failed as the organisation’s spokesperson’s number was off. The DCEC is said to have questioned the whole school and handed the matter to the ministry, who decided to suspend the five.