MOE Teacher, Who Draw $8.8K Monthly Salary, Allegedly Pocketed $40K from Students

We all have that one Class Rep or Monitor who would help the entire class print some notes, or to collect money to buy some books. Usually, we do know that sometimes, some of us overpay by a little or underpay a little: we’ll just let that go, and the Class Rep would either smile at the extra cash that he’s collected or frown at the deficit that he’d have to top up.

It’s all part and parcel of being the Class Rep (or in secondary school, the treasurer), and whatever surplus or deficit isn’t intentional. And the difference would usually amount to just a few dollars—anything above and the Class Rep would have to escalate it to the teachers.

But what if a teacher does that…and receives well over $40,000 in surplus from her students?

While it’s hard to believe, it allegedly happened, right here in Singapore.

In fact, in an MOE school.

Teacher Allegedly Pocketed $40,000 from Students

Meet Maslinda Zainal, an English Head of Department (HOD) from Woodgrove Secondary School. The 44-year-old draws a monthly salary of $8,800, and reports direct to the Vice-principal.

According to reports, students would have to pay some money to buy something known as “Excel packages”, which were prepared by the teachers. The package was for some English lessons.

They would pay it to their English teachers and Maslinda would collect the money to hand it to the school bookshop that printed the materials.

Between January 2016 to April 2017, which is a total of fifteen months, she allegedly over-collected the amount of $40,000.

I know what you’re thinking: What kind of packages would cost so much? I mean, this amount is the over-collection, not the principal amount. That means the original cost would have been much, much higher.

I Googled for “Excel package” and as expected, the results showed all Microsoft Excel links. So don’t bother to Google as well.

Guess the world has really changed, but anyways.

Turned out that if not for one teacher’s Sherlock Holmes’ skills and the principal’s CSI skills, Maslinda might have even pocketed more.

Lower Secondary Head for English Spotted Something

Ms Jacqueline Chan, the Lower Secondary Head for English, was asking the bookshop owner whether the packages have been paid for, and when she saw the invoice, she had a shock: the amount was “significantly different from the amount collected from the students.”

Oh, now that makes sense. So the over-collection could be as high as the original amount, just like how loan shark jacked up their interest to be higher than the loan amount.

Okay, got it…but still? $40,000 for papers?

Moving on, Ms Chan told the principal. And since Maslinda was in charge of liaising with the bookshop owner and do the payment, the principal got copies of the name lists of classes, book lists and invoices, just so to collect evidence without Maslinda knowing.

But the shop-owner only has invoices for 2016 and 2017, as invoices before that were not available “due to a round of housekeeping”.

For that fifteen months, the discrepancy is already $40,000.

It’s unknown whether there was even more over-collection prior to that period.

Police Report Made & MOE Notified

After this, the principal made a police report and notified the discipline unit of MOE. Maslinda is now suspended and the teacher who found out about it took on her roles.

MOE has told Channel NewsAsia that they took a “serious view” of this incident but could not comment as the matter is before the courts.

This is an ongoing trial and tomorrow (29 November 2018), the trial would continue.

Maslinda could have been jailed for up to 10 years or fined for committing a criminal breach of trust (yeah, the same one as Kong Hee).