The Ministry of Education (MoE) employs 70 percent of all civil service employees in Afghanistan, the largest of the Afghan government. However, due to a lack of transparent and modern systems, many of the employees rely on high-risk cash transfers to receive their salaries.

To mitigate the risks involved in the payroll process, the MoE is partnering with USAID to support an alternative way of transferring cash that is more reliable, timely, and convenient.

As part of this effort, the MoE, with technical support from the USAID, introduced and implemented e-payments using a mobile banking system to pay salaries at the local level.

Under the pilot program launched on October 10, 2018, in Bamyan province, 3,230 MoE employees registered in a mobile banking system. The service allows MoE employees to receive their salaries on time and in full. This is the first time that MoE staff in remote areas can receive their salaries through a mobile banking system using their own accounts.

E-payments are instrumental in mitigating risk and corruption. It prevents integrity breaches, while processing payroll and also enhances transparency and accountability of the MoE at the local level.

Mr. Khalil Rafat, a school principal in Panjab district of Bamyan, recently registered in the banking system said, “before having the banking option, the distribution of salaries was not carried out transparently. I used to receive my own and other teachers’ salaries in cash which was associated with many problems such as delays in getting paid, extra charges from the bank for transferring and disbursing salaries in remote areas, and security risks of transferring such large amounts of cash. After registering into the new mobile banking system, our problems are solved, and we are now able to receive our salaries very conveniently.”