NAIROBI Kenya February 13 –
. Government to recover money, assets gained from fraudulent position
. Implicated employees to be denied any form of benefits including pensions, allowances or leave
. Cases referred to EACC and DCI for investigation and prosecution
More than 2,000 employees in government have forged academic certificates, according to the Public Service Commission (PSC).
The PSC Chairman Anthony Muchiri on Tuesday February 13 said there are some public servants in critical government parastatals who acquired their positions using fake certificates.
The authentication of academic and professional certificates, which was launched in October 2022, was undertaken by ministries, State departments and State corporations.
A total of 2,067 cases of forgery were detected.
The findings revealed that most public servants with forged academic documents are in the Ministry of Interior, the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and the Geothermal and Development Corporation, a parastatal under the Ministry of Energy.
The probe targeted 331 institutions among them 52 ministries, State Departments and Agencies (MDAs), 239 State corporations and Semi-Autonomous Government Agencies and 40 public universities.
The probed institutions were required to submit list of graduands in the last 10 years, and submit list of graduands in subsequent graduations at the end of every calendar year.
They were also to provide the commission with access and verification credentials for online verification of job-seeking candidates’ academic and professional certificates.
With only 195 complying, 1,280 cases referred to the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) out of the submitted 58,599 cases were found to be forged.
“This number is not final as the authentication exercise is still ongoing and we expect to receive more cases of forgeries,” the commission said.
Some 787 officers in the MDAs have been found to have secured appointments and promotions in the public service using forged documents from universities and tertiary institutions.
The common types of forgeries discovered include alteration of KCSE mean grades, forged KCSE certificates by those who did not sit the exam, fake education certificates while others were found to have never sat the alleged examinations or registered as candidates.
Other forgery types include certificate numbers of submitted certificates that did not belong to the alleged owner and names on some certificates that were faked – where the culprit’s name is different from the real owner.
Some Bachelors Degree certificates Second Division (Lower) were also found to have been altered to reflect Second Division (Upper).
PSC recommended that all cases should be referred to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) for prosecution and recovery of money and assets gained from the fraudulent positions.
The commission also wants all persons of interest to be denied any form of benefits including pensions, allowances or leave.
The report was handed over to DCI and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) for further action.
The report was released in Nairobi in a function which was also attended by EACC CEO Twalib Mbarak, chairman David Oginde and DCI boss Mohamed Amin.
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