`There is not a single ghost school in Punjab. That is out of question. Ghost teachers and ghost schools are not an issue in Punjab,` says a senior official in charge of monitoring.

Former president and General Pervez Musharraf once said that `there are between 30 and 40,000 ghost schools, amounting to 20 percent of all schools.` According to Khalid Khattak, an investigative reporter on education, `Punjab doesn`t have a ghost teacher problem like it used to. It`s because of the monitoring system put in place. They are also taking disciplinary action against teachers who do not show up.

`Punjab has fired many teachers,` says Khattak, `We keep hearing complaints from teachers` asso-ciations.

KP has instituted the same system. According to Education Minister Atif Khan, `The problem of teachers collecting salaries but actually doing business in Dubai or other jobs has I won`t say 100% but maybe 99% been solved.` Sindh and Balochistan have also removed thousands of ghost teachers from the payrolls.

Ghost teachers are relatively easy to get rid of, as long as they are really `ghosts.` A bigger problem is teachers who are simply absent a lot, and therefore still around to put up a fight if their jobs are threatened. They are also represented by teachers` unions.

Absentee rates plummet when monitoring is introduced. Punjab has brought down its absenteeism rate from 20 per cent in 2010 to six per cent today. KP`s is down from 30 per cent in March 2015 when monitoring started to 13 per cent today.