Gia Lai Provincial Inspectorate has just issued an inspection conclusion on the management and use of funding sources and construction investment at the People's Committee of An Khe town. Accordingly, dozens of schools in the area have incorrectly spent preferential allowances for teachers worth more than 8.8 billion VND.

Gia Lai Provincial Inspectorate determined that schools paid preferential allowances in 2022 and 2023 to teachers not in accordance with the Prime Minister's Decisions on approving the list of communes in regions III, II, I in ethnic minority and mountainous areas; Joint Circulars of the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and the Decision of the Ethnic Committee...

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The Department of Education and Training of An Khe town, where 21 schools incorrectly paid preferential allowances to teachers in the amount of more than 8.8 billion VND. Photo: Contributor

Specifically, according to the Department of Education and Training of An Khe town, previously the allowance for teachers was determined according to the terrain. From 2021, Decision 861 of the Prime Minister divided regions according to the economic and social situation; communes that meet the new rural standards are classified into region I, the preferential allowance level for civil servants and public employees is reduced. Accordingly, many preschool and primary school teachers in the area used to receive a regional preferential allowance of 50% of the base salary, now only 35%; and for secondary school teachers, the allowance is reduced from 35% to 30%.

Failure to promptly implement the above changes resulted in 21 kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary schools in An Khe town incorrectly paying preferential allowances to 934 teachers, of which the school with the most incorrect payments paid to 101 people and the school with the least incorrect payments paid to 16 people.

The total amount of wrongful spending is more than 8.8 billion VND. The schools with the largest wrongful spending are Ngo May Primary School with more than 1.3 billion VND; Vo Thi Sau Primary School with nearly 1.1 billion VND...

According to the inspection conclusion, the schools' incorrect payment of preferential allowances to teachers was also due to the fact that the Finance and Planning Department of An Khe town had appraised and approved annual settlements for kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools not in accordance with new regulations.

Gia Lai Provincial Inspectorate requested the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee to direct the People's Committee of An Khe town to review the responsibility of the Head of the Finance and Planning Department in advising the People's Committee of the town to assign budget estimates and approve final accounts for units with violations but not promptly detected for correction and handling; at the same time, review the heads of departments, boards, and principals of affiliated schools; and recover the amount of violations of more than 8.8 billion VND to the state budget.