Serious Great News! MOM finally woke up and investigate FTs' Qualifications!

[Pinkieslut]

MOM investigating 15 work pass holders who declared qualifications from private university in India

17 Feb 2021 10:12PM(Updated: 17 Feb 2021 10:20PM)

SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is currently investigating 15 work pass holders who declared qualifications from a private university in India.
The 15 individuals are currently employed in Singapore and had declared qualifications from Manav Bharti University in their work pass applications, said MOM


"If found to have falsely declared their educational qualifications, their work passes will be immediately revoked and they will be permanently barred from employment in Singapore," said an MOM spokesperson in a statement on Wednesday (Feb 17).
Employers have the primary responsibility to ensure the "authenticity and quality" of the academic qualifications of the foreigners they wish to hire, said MOM.
Before making a work pass application, the employer should have already evaluated the candidate, including his qualifications, to ensure the applicant has the right skills and qualifications for the position applied.
"The majority of employers take this role seriously as it is in their interest to have a rigorous selection and recruitment process in place to ensure qualified candidates," said the ministry.

As an additional safeguard to uphold the integrity of the work pass framework, MOM conducts its own checks and verification after the employer submits the academic documents.
"We scrutinise higher-risk academic institutions, companies and individuals more closely, conduct additional checks and require submission of verification proof of the qualifications declared in selected applications," it said.
MOM also verifies the authenticity of submitted qualifications directly through the issuing institutions or third-party screening agencies.
"In addition, MOM receives and acts on reports from employers who discover that they have been misled after the work pass holder has arrived." the ministry added.

MOM will revoke the work passes of foreign employees found to have submitted forged documents in their work pass applications. They will also be permanently barred from working in Singapore.
They may also be prosecuted under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act.
If found guilty, they face a fine of up to S$20,000, a jail term of up to two years or both.
MOM said in the last five years, an average of 660 foreigners have been permanently barred each year from working in Singapore for submitting fake education qualifications in their work pass applications.
Over the same period, an average of eight foreigners each year were convicted and penalised by the courts for false declarations of educational qualifications.

 

[laksaboy]

How about checking those who're already in the country? Try raiding Melville Park condo for a start. Happy hunting.

 

[countryman]

By now already thousands n thousands of fake degrees have bypassed the system in Sinkapor oredi... Isn't it too late now? Many have worked here n left the country oredi..

 

[knnccb]

fucking phua lanjiao 15 only? at least 150,000 lah

 

[knnccb]

that cheebye ceca country got even one legit uni recognised by any country in the world meh? lol

 

[countryman]

How about checking those who're already in the country? Try raiding Melville Park condo for a start. Happy hunting.

Swimming pool plenty there in Melville Park having their night swim...Many are in sarees, u won't missed it.

 

[knnccb]

Swimming pool plenty there in Melville Park swimming...Many are in sarees, u won't missed it.

mumbai park

 

[batman1]

MOM 20 years later then wake up ??? Still sleeping on the job.

 

[Cottonmouth]

Jo Teo can fuck herself with a knife.
Stab her own cheebye and pull it towards her neck.

 

[laksaboy]

Why check now? You wanted quantity, not quality. It's a numbers game, go ask your urban planners.

 

[Loofydralb]

Another wayang production from vaunted Civil Servants.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Why employers not persecuted? They hire illegals

 

[tanwahtiu]

High Rent seeking economy need FT w high quality tenants doesn't care they are fakes.

Only when complaints they react. PAP no balls to ban it totally....TH fault...

 

[millim6868]

CB alll bullshit, to all those sinkies ,fake cert can get u high pay jobs means sinkies don need study so hard n earn meagre pay, we can see for ourselves fake also can get a high pay job, even PAPigs can be replaced ,hope 61% wakeup

 

[congo9]

They should have done that decades ago. The MOM is not just sleeping on the job, they are making mistakes.

 

[syed putra]

Biil gates, zuckerberg, steve jobs did not have degrees! How?

 

[bobby]

Such a thing called proactive versus reactive....

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

This should not have happened in the first place.

Where is Josephine Teo?
What has she to say?
Cry in Parliament again?

 

[bobby]

I really doubt there are only 15 possible cases.....

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Graduates with fake degrees working in Singapore is an issue that goes back a long time - The Online Citizen Asia

The private university in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh was recently caught for having sold 36,000 degrees across 17 states in over 11 years, the Times of India reported earlier this month.

“If found to have falsely declared their educational qualifications, their work passes will be immediately revoked and they will be permanently barred from employment in Singapore,” said an MOM spokesperson in a statement on Wednesday (17 Feb).

MOM added that the onus is on the employers to ensure the “authenticity and quality” of the academic qualifications of the foreigners they wish to hire, particularly before making a work pass application for them.

MOM also said that as an additional safeguard, it carries out its own checks after the employer submits the staff members’ academic documents.

“We scrutinise higher-risk academic institutions, companies and individuals more closely, conduct additional checks and require submission of verification proof of the qualifications declared in selected applications,” it said.

Past cases of foreigners caught for providing fake qualifications in their applications
However, this is not the first time such an incident has happened in Singapore. In fact, the actual scale of this issue in Singapore is much bigger than what most would have expected.

Then in 2015, an Indian-born Singapore citizen Nisha Padmanabhan was embroiled in a controversy after she included her MBA degree in her job application. Her MBA was issued from the web-based Southern Pacific University (SPU), a suspected degree mill.

Ms Nisha was an employee of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), now called Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). After its initial investigations, IDA concluded that Ms Nisha “did not deceive” the statutory board as her MBA “was not a relevant certificate for her position in IDA”.

However, it later changed its position and said it was “continuing to look into” the matter, as public uproar continued.

At the end, IDA confirmed its position – that Ms Nisha’s employment was not based on considerations of her MBA degree “as her position required only a bachelor’s degree, and that it also considered her relevant skills and prior work experience”, according to the Straits Times.

In 2019, Mikhy Brochez, the foreigner at the centre of the Singapore’s HIV Registry leak, had in fact used forged university degrees to get jobs at Temasek Polytechnic (TP) and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) when he was working in Singapore.

When TP was asked by the media how Brochez was able to be recruited by the school with forged degrees, a TP spokesman said, “Based on the documents that Brochez submitted in his job application in 2008, he met the job requirements.”

Brochez, who started working in Singapore in 2008, managed to impress TP so much that the institute even allowed him to set up a Child Psychology Clinic within the polytechnic, for him to provide consultancy and assessment services when he was with TP.

However, UK newspaper The Independent later uncovered that Brochez’s credentials were fake.

With regard to TP and NP hiring Brochez despite his qualifications being forged, Mr Alvin Ang, MD of Quantum Leap Career Consultants, call the oversight by TP and NP “a serious breach of professional ethics”. He said, “You are hiring him as a lecturer. The academic aspect of his degree is the most important part, so how could you miss that out?”

Besides this case, in September 2019, Pakistani national Mohammad Sohail was charged and convicted by the district court here for lying in his permanent residence (PR) application to the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) more than 20 years ago.

Sohail first arrived in Singapore in 1995 on an Employment Pass (EP) and quickly married a Singaporean woman the following year. Between September and October 1997, he applied for PR and falsely stated he had a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Punjab.

In actual fact, he had submitted a fake degree, which he obtained from his cousin in Pakistan. It’s not known if he had also used the same fake degree to obtain his EP earlier so as to be allowed to work in Singapore. In any case, Sohail’s PR application was approved in December 1997.

What’s even more boggling is that it took ICA more than 20 years to uncover the fake degree sent in by the Pakistani and how he obtained the EP to work in Singapore in 1995 before he married the Singaporean woman.

The Pakistani man is not the only one who managed to con the ICA in granting PR status to them by producing a fake degree.

De Luna Noriza Dancel submitted false documents purportedly from the Centro Escolar University during her PR application in 2008 and 2009. She was eventually granted PR status by ICA but was only arrested about a decade later in 2017 for submitting the fake documents. And in took about another 2 more years for De Luna to be prosecuted and sentenced.

These issues are not recent.

In 2007, China national Hong Tao was arrested after it was found that his degree from the Anhui Institute of Electro Mechanics was fake. The man, who worked as an engineer in Singapore for eight years before his arrest, was granted PR in September 2006.

As for the recent fake degree scandal uncovered at Manav Bharti University recently, many netizens have also shared their personal encounters with their colleagues from India who allegedly have only the bare minimum knowledge and skills to carry out a certain task.

To make it worse, they even said that higher management turns a blind eye to the situation despite knowing that these foreign workers have below-par capabilities.

According to MOM, in the last five years, an average of 660 foreigners have been permanently barred each year from working in Singapore for submitting fake education qualifications in their work pass applications.

Over the same period, an average of eight foreigners each year were convicted and penalised by the courts for false declarations of educational qualifications.

Even so, records by MOM shows that the number of Employment Pass (EP), S Pass and Work Permit granted to foreigners have been, on average, steadily increasing since 2007.

The numbers for S Pass have been on the rise since 2007, except for a slight dip in 2020. However, the figures for EP and Work Permit have been fluctuating from 2007 to 2019, with a slight reduction in 2020.

Flourish logo
Based on all the previous cases of fake education qualifications highlighted in the article, it clearly shows that this problem has been happening for a long time now.

These cases are just some of those that have been reported and discovered. As such, one can’t help to wonder if authorities are doing much to prevent such reoccurrence in the country.

Share this: