THE Federal Government on Monday attributed the failure to pay salaries of some teachers recruited into unity schools in 2018 to the delay in their migration to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System which it said was to forestall illegal employment.

It, however, promised that the affected teachers would start receiving their salaries by the end of the month.

The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echono, disclosed this in a chat with journalists after monitoring the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination at Federal Government Girls College Bwari and Government Girls Secondary School Dutse, Abuja

Echono, who said he was concerned about the plight of the affected teachers, said, “It is a very unfortunate incident that keeps me awake at night, but the reality is that there was a cause for it.

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“The people you are talking about are legitimate officers who were properly employed and documented but unfortunately there were cases of illegal employment and when this was noticed, an embargo was placed on migrating them to IPPIS.

“But the embargo has since been lifted. Many of them who have been invited have done the needful. The assurances I have is that by the end of September or October, they will begin to receive their salaries.”

Echono, who commended the peaceful conduct of this year’s examination, further noted that over 1.57 million candidates registered for the WASSCE in over 19,000 examination centres nationwide.

“Beside the disruptions we had on September 13 in South East where some of our candidates were stopped from sitting for their examinations, it is a peaceful and stress-free examination,” he added.