[ad_1]
The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) revealed that it is currently investigating 15 Singapore job pass holders who had declared Manav Bharti University educational qualifications in their job pass applications.
The private university in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh was recently arrested for having sold 36,000 degrees in 17 states in more than 11 years, the Times of India reported earlier this month.
“If it is found that they have falsely declared their educational qualifications, their work passes will be immediately revoked and they will be permanently banned from employment in Singapore,” a MOM spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday (February 17).
MOM added that employers have a responsibility to ensure the “authenticity and quality” of the academic qualifications of foreigners they wish to hire, particularly before submitting an application for a job pass.
MOM also said that as an added safeguard, it conducts its own checks after the employer submits the academic documents of the staff members.
“We take a closer look at higher risk academic institutions, companies and individuals, perform additional checks and require the submission of proof of verification of the qualifications stated in selected applications,” he said.
Previous Cases of Foreigners Caught for Providing False Qualifications on Their Applications
However, this is not the first time such an incident has occurred in Singapore. In fact, the true scale of this problem in Singapore is much larger than most would have expected.
In 2015, an Indian-born Singaporean citizen, Nisha Padmanabhan, became embroiled in controversy after she included her MBA degree in her job application. His MBA was issued by the web-based South Pacific University (SPU), a purported degree factory.
Ms. Nisha was an employee of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), now called the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). After its initial investigations, IDA concluded that Ms. Nisha “did not mislead” the statutory board as her MBA “was not a relevant certificate for her position at IDA.”
However, he later changed his position and said he was “continuing to investigate” the matter, as the public uproar continued.
In the end, IDA confirmed its position: that Ms Nisha’s employment was not based on considerations of her MBA degree “as her position only required 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 center of the Singapore HIV Registry leak, had in fact used counterfeit college degrees to land jobs at Temasek Polytechnic (TP) and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) while working in Singapore.
When the media asked TP how Brochez was able to be recruited by the school with forged degrees, a TP spokesperson said: “According to documents Brochez submitted in his job application in 2008, he met the requirements for the position.”
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, to provide consulting and evaluation services while he was at TP.
However, the British newspaper The Independent later discovered that Brochez’s credentials were false.
Regarding the hiring of Brochez by TP and NP despite falsification of their qualifications, Mr. Alvin Ang, MD of Quantum Leap Career Consultants, called TP and NP’s oversight a “serious violation of the professional”. He said, “You’re hiring him as a speaker. The academic aspect of your degree is the most important part, so how could you miss that? “
In addition to this case, in September 2019, Pakistani citizen Mohammad Sohail was charged and convicted by the district court here for lying on his application for permanent residence (PR) before the Immigration and Control Points Authority (ICA) more than 20 years.
Sohail first came to Singapore in 1995 with an Employment Pass (EP) and quickly married a Singaporean woman the following year. Between September and October 1997, he applied for the public relations position and falsely claimed that he had a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Punjab.
In fact, he had submitted a false title, which he obtained from his cousin in Pakistan. It is not known if he had also used the same fake title to get his EP before so he could work in Singapore. In any event, Sohail’s PR request was approved in December 1997.
What is even more astonishing is that it took ICA over 20 years to discover the fake title sent by the Pakistani and how he got the EP to work in Singapore in 1995 before marrying the Singaporean woman.
The Pakistani man is not the only one who managed to trick the ICA into granting them public relations status by presenting a false title.
In January last year, a 38-year-old Filipino woman was jailed for “providing false statements” to ICA about her and her daughter’s public relations requests.
De Luna Noriza Dancel presented false documents allegedly from the Universidad Centro Escolar during her public relations application in 2008 and 2009. Eventually, ICA granted her public relations status, but she was only arrested approximately a decade later in 2017 for presenting the false documents. . And it took about another 2 more years for De Luna to be prosecuted and sentenced.
These problems are not recent.
In 2007, Chinese citizen Hong Tao was arrested after his degree from the Anhui Electromechanical Institute was found to be false. The man, who worked as an engineer in Singapore for eight years prior to his arrest, was granted a public relationship in September 2006.
As for the recent fake degree scandal recently uncovered at Manav Bharti University, many netizens have also shared their personal encounters with their colleagues in India who allegedly only have the minimal knowledge and skills to carry out a certain task.
To make matters worse, they even said that senior management is turning a blind eye to the situation despite knowing that these foreign workers have below-average skills.
According to MOM, in the past five years, an average of 660 foreigners have been permanently barred from working in Singapore each year for submitting false educational qualifications on their job pass applications.
During the same period, an average of eight foreigners each year were convicted and sanctioned by the courts for false statements of educational qualifications.
Still, MOM records show that the number of Employment Passes (EPs), S Passes and Work Permits issued to foreigners has increased, on average, steadily since 2007.
The S Pass numbers have been on the rise since 2007, except for a slight drop in 2020. However, the EP and Work Permit numbers have been fluctuating from 2007 to 2019, with a slight reduction in 2020.
Based on all the previous cases of bogus educational qualifications highlighted in the article, it clearly shows that this problem has been going on for a long time.
These cases are just a few of those that have been reported and discovered. As such, one cannot help but wonder if the authorities are doing much to prevent it from happening again in the country.
This publication is also available at:
Simplified Chinese (Simplified Chinese))
