Stop certificate fraud
The proverbial 40 days of the crooks who have been illegally drawing salaries after getting jobs using forged certificates are about to end. In a long-overdue move, the noose is tightening around the necks of workers in the private and public sectors with fake certificates.
Academic fraudsters will have nowhere to hide or perpetuate mediocrity by holding positions they add no value to. It will soon be easy to detect fake certificates as the government rolls out a unified database that enables employers, learning institutions, and other interested entities to verify academic qualifications at the touch of a button.
This system will bring academic records of basic education, technical and vocational training, and university qualifications into one database.
The Kenya National Qualifications Authority (KNQA) has already onboarded 22 per cent of the universities, with the rest to be added by the end of the year. It will consolidate graduate records, enabling employers to instantly authenticate qualifications. The National Qualifications Database (NQD) will thus replace the cumbersome method of manually tracing academic records across private institutions and government agencies.
A Public Service Commission (PSC) report for 2023/2024 says that 1,019 civil servants had forged academic credentials and 744 of them are facing disciplinary action.
The multi-agency crackdown on forged certificates has been intensified. It is a welcome shift from mere policy warnings to prosecution. The culprits are sacked and every single shilling paid to them is recovered.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) have been tracking down and charging suspect high-ranking officials in the county and national governments. This one-stop system will enable the quick vetting of academic certificates to weed out fraudsters who fake their way into jobs and institutions of higher learning.
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