An ad posted in a public Facebook group announces that “St Mary’s Schools and Colleges” in Uganda are hiring.
The ad appears to be from the Ugandan newspaper Daily Monitor – it’s in the form of a poster, with the logo of the newspaper and the date 14 January 2022 across the top.
Jobs listed include teachers, nurses, laboratory technicians, bursars, facility maintenance personnel, secretaries and drivers.
“Interested applicants” are asked to submit their applications to a Gmail email address by 28 January.
But is this job ad legit? We checked.
Newspaper dismisses ad as ‘fake’
We searched the Daily Monitor’s social media for the St Mary’s ad but could not find it.
We did find that the newspaper had flagged the ad circulating on social media as “fake”, in a warning on their official Facebook page on 21 January.
We also searched online for an institution called “St Mary’s Schools and Colleges” and came up empty.
We found St Mary’s College, Kisubi, a secondary school founded by the Catholic church, and St Mary’s Kitende Senior Secondary School. privately owned by Dr Lawrence Mulindwa. The two schools do not appear to be connected.
We also asked contacts in Uganda if there was any institution known as St Mary’s Schools and Colleges and will update this report when we hear back. But in the absence of evidence that any such school exists, consider this job ad false.
For more tips on Facebook scams and how to spot them, read our guide.
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
Add new comment