Published: October 7, 2026
MONROVIA – More than 1,000 teachers who abandoned their classrooms have been struck from the government payroll, the Ministry of Education said on Tuesday during a budget hearing at the Ministry of Finance. Finance Ministry officials pressed the ministry at the same hearing, saying the payroll still carries teachers who are paid but are not teaching.
“Through our internal payroll cleaning process, we removed more than 1,000 teachers who have abandoned the classroom,” Atty. Nyekeh Y. Forkpa, the deputy minister for administration, told a budget hearing at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. Forkpa led the ministry’s delegation.
By Lennart Dodoo
The ministry used the money freed up by the cleanup to bring volunteer teachers onto the payroll, Forkpa said. The Finance Ministry funded 1,000 volunteer teachers in 2025, and the savings from the removals paid for more than 1,000 others, bringing the total enrolled to a little over 2,000.
The official chairing the hearing for the Finance Ministry said the problem runs deeper. He said that judging by the teacher-student ratio, the payroll should already hold enough teachers for the classrooms that sit empty.
“So there’s a good amount of people who are somewhere, who are not in the classroom, but on the payroll. And we’re adding more,” he said.
He told the ministry that any savings from removing absent teachers would stay in the education sector.
“Whatever savings you all get from adequate monitoring, we’re not going to take the money from you. We’re going to give it back to you,” he said.
Forkpa said a nationwide assessment counted 6,198 volunteer teachers. The ministry has frozen the list at that number, and anyone added beyond it would be coming in improperly, he said. The assessment found that only about half of those volunteers have the qualifications to teach. Forkpa said the ministry is starting an in-service program to train those who can be qualified.
He said teachers keep abandoning postings in remote areas because they are paid the same as teachers in Monrovia. Communities then fill the gap with volunteers, sometimes high school students. The ministry’s 2027 budget will seek a housing allowance for teachers in hard-to-reach areas, he said.
The Finance Ministry official said that allowance must go to people who are actually in the classroom.
“There should be nowhere in this country where you consider hard to reach,” he said, urging the ministry to deploy teachers to the areas they come from.
Forkpa said lawmakers add to the pressure by building schools without consulting the ministry. Those schools are put on the payroll while the lawmakers are in office, he said, and when they leave office, the ministry is expected to take the schools over even in the middle of a budget year.
A Civil Service Agency official at the hearing said many volunteers who finally get onto the payroll quickly go on study leave and move to Monrovia to enroll in universities, while staying on the payroll. Forkpa said study leave now requires approval at the top of the ministry and a compelling reason. Before, county education officers could approve it, he said.
Forkpa said the ministry’s approved budget for the current year was $53.9 million and was later revised to $59 million. Among the year’s results, he listed:
- instructional materials translated into 16 languages
- menstrual hygiene support for about 23,600 girls in about 150 schools
- support for 1,330 scholarship beneficiaries
- $1 million in government funding for school feeding, which partners had largely run before
He said the ministry’s 2027 priorities include keeping girls in school, technical and vocational education, teacher training, early grade literacy, school infrastructure, and monitoring. He said monitoring has suffered because county and district education officers lack vehicles and motorcycles.
On the World Bank-funded Excel program, Forkpa said the ministry spent “an inordinate amount of time” recruiting a project management team. He said all but one of the program’s prerequisites have been met, and that school construction and renovation under the program should start in the first quarter of next year.
The budget committee is hearing from spending agencies before submitting the draft 2027 budget to the Legislature by Oct. 31.
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