Weed out fake certificates

For a country that relishes the training and deployment of high-quality manpower for efficiency in the private and public sectors, the proliferation of fake certificates used to gain employment is worrying.

First and foremost, the organisation that ends up hiring an incompetent fellow masquerading as an expert is short-changed and exposed to grave danger if the job requires deep knowledge and high skills.

Over the years, there have been exposes on people using fake papers obtained from Nairobi’s illegal River Road printers to sneak into jobs they do not deserve. The institutions of higher learning always strive to recruit the very best, being in the competitive knowledge-based education sector.

It is, therefore, commendable that the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) has struck 350 employees off its payroll after an audit revealed that they hold questionable academic papers. Interestingly, those who have been flushed out belong to all the cadres, including lecturers. The university is being too lenient by waiting to terminate the jobs at the end of the month. They should have been summarily dismissed, arrested and charged with fraud.

These fake lecturers will purportedly have imparted knowledge and skills to those they pretended to teach. If they ended up in critical areas, a grave danger looms. The TUK’s campaign to authenticate the academic credentials of its staff has been going on since last December.

It is by no chance the only one. Cases of people making and uttering fake certificates are rife, especially in the public sector. The crooks get the positions, locking out those genuinely capable of doing the jobs.

This is why we welcome the decision to refer some of the cases to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to take the matter to its logical conclusion.

The fake certificates racket is not just a shame, but also a criminal offence. The holders of fake certificates should be weeded out.