In this study the Community Based Monitoring Project (CBMP) of Malawi investigates the effect of delays in teachers' salary administration on service delivery in primary schools.
Salaries are generally administered one of two ways in Malawi- either in cash, which is handed down through various levels before it is hand delivered to the teacher by the head teacher, or through the Malswitch System, developed in 2009, which uses fingerprint technology and ATM or Point of Sale Machines to administer funds. Malswich was launched as an improved alternative to the cash system, which proved to be neither efficient nor secure, however CBMP found that delays in salary administration actually increased with Malswitch.
After determining that both systems led to delays in salary administration, CBMP set out to investigate what the outcomes of those delays were, specifically, what effect they had on teacher behavior. CBMP discovered that about half of teachers reported altering their behavior in some way due to salary delays, and recommends that salary administration be decentralized, that teacher monitoring mechanisms be set in place, and that the Malswitch system be restricted to urban areas only.
