Teacher Payroll Is Free of Criminal Infiltration: SEG

(Acapulco, JG 15 December) The massive payroll of the State Department of Education has been often criticized for its many “double-dippers” and “ghost workers,” but hardly anyone thought it would be vulnerable to infiltration by drug gangs. Yet, the Secretary of Education felt compelled to deny any such thing in a statement made yesterday.

Education secretary José Luis González de la Vega Otero reassured the public that the payroll list for all of Guerrero’s public educational institutions is “bullet-proof” from organized crime. The official made the statement in the face of revelations in the neighboring state of Michoacán that criminal groups were hijacking part of the state payroll by listing crime bosses as professors. De la Vega said that the same thing could not happen in Guerrero, because payroll recipients are checked against the Social Security rolls and other databases to be sure that they are not known criminals, fictitious persons, or deceased.

In Michoacán, it was revealed that Servando Gómez Martínez, known as “La Tuta,” had been listed as a professor and receiving a full salary, even though his occupation was drug gang leader and not teacher.

The head of the Guerrero Department of Education made his statement during a visit to a technical school in the Acapulco suburb of Zapata. He added that the Guerrero teacher payroll is constantly being checked against other government records to clean out any individuals who occupy more than one position or who have no connection with the school system. He added that the “Auditoría Superior de la Federación” (similar to the General Accounting Office in the United States) has been working on the payroll list since 2009, and that the entire list of paid teachers is “clean.”