421 Fake Certificates Detected

June 21, 2006
By a staff reporter

DUBAI — The Ministry of Labour has detected 421 fake scientific certificates since the enforcement of the mandatory system for attestation of certificates for certain specialisations in the private sector in September last year.

Of the forged documents, a Bachelor of Civil Engineering Sciences for an architect working as a manager of a leading construction firm, and another certificate for a Safety Officer in addition to a PhD in Business Administration.

Dr. Ali bin Abdullah Al Kaabi, Minister of Labour, told reporters yesterday that the system of certificate attestation had been very effective, prompting other federal departments to follow suit. “We have managed to unearth many forged certificate of workers coming to the UAE. A security manager at a prominent business group was found to have forged his science certificate. We found that a nurse in a private clinic had forged her qualifications and her certificate of birth," he said.

The ministry, he affirmed, had stopped issuing employment permits for holders of fake certificates from unaccredited universities, and for rare specialists like doctors and engineers who committed mistakes in their countries. “The ministry refuses to attest and scrutinise certificates issued by unknown or unaccredited universities,” he maintained.

On the results of the system which went into force since September 2005, he explained that 51,698 certificates from different countries of the world had been scrutinised, and of them 421 turned out to be false. “Minimum attestation duration is 10 days as in Australia and the maximum is 25 days as in India,” he added.

On the complaint of the private sector about the high fees of attestation, the minister said: “Dh500 is charged by the specialised company for the attestation and the ministry does not take any part of this fee. The post also levies a meagre per cent of that money for its service.”

According to him, the ministry is not running after financial gains at all and that the percentage of attested certificates for incoming workers does not exceed 10 out of the total issued visas estimated at 700,000 a year. On legal actions against holders of false certificates, Dr. Al Kaabi noted that most of the workers whose certificates were scrutinised were out of the country, and therefore no employment permits were issued for the workers.

“In case, any worker is present in the UAE, his permit is cancelled and no fee is refunded,” he said. Meanwhile Paul Kein, Middle East Business Development Manager at the company responsible for attestation, noted that India took the first slot with 60 per cent of total false certificates. He said this represented one per cent of the certificates submitted for attestation. The Middle East ranked second with 15pc, followed by South East Asia at 7 per cent, Europe at 7pc, Africa 5 per cent, in addition to North America and Russia. He added that a breakdown showed that lower, unskilled professions formed 60 per cent of the forged certificates, followed by medium professions at 35 per cent, and senior management at 3 per cent. Professionally, he said engineering sector topped the list with 22 per cent, followed by services at 17 per cent, financial and banking sector at 9 per cent. Tourism and hotels, he noted accounted for 7 per cent of the negative results, education at 5 per cent and 3 per cent each for oil and gas, marketing and advertising, and health.

*Reproduced with permission from Khaleej Times