Freetown 1 September 2011--- The Records Management Improvement Team contracted by the Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to undertake nationwide teacher verification met with stakeholders at the Ministry’s conference room of Thursday 1 September.

Addressing the meeting on the need to address the age old problem of the exact number of teachers on government payroll, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education Mr. Bayoh, urged the consultant to utilise their expertise to put an end to this vicious circle as succeeding governments have been grappling with this problem for decades.

He said teachers constitute about 50% of the public sector and that government have been spending enormous amount on teachers stating that this time round, we need to get it right.

Director of Public Sector Reform Unit PSRU, Dr. Julius Sandy, informed the meeting that his first assignment upon assuming the position of Establishment Secretary was to undertake a Verification exercise of civil servants as he realised then that the civil service had excess labour.

After the Verification exercise which was conducted by the Records Management Improvement Team, he said, the strength of the service was reduced from 17,500 to slightly over 12,000, making a savings of Le 500 million monthly for the government.

He said while success has been made on the size of the civil service that of the teachers remains elusive and urged stakeholders to collaborate with the consultants to be part of this epoch making event.

The RMIT has concluded the first phase of the project which was the creation of files for teachers and the second phase which is the Verification of teachers across the country will commence in September.