Government clampdown on credentials cheats welcomed

Misrepresentation of academic qualifications to get jobs in the public and private sector could soon become a criminal offence if a proposed bill is approved. The most recent high-profile freight industry member to be disgraced was Dube TradePort CEO Saxen Van Coller, who was fired after her false qualifications were exposed in the media. Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa said during a parliamentary session earlier this month that higher education and training minister Blade Nzimande was working on a proposal to address the “scourge”. “Further details will be available once Cabinet has considered and approved the proposal,” he said. He said Nzimande had already requested the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) to establish a national register to list names of individuals who had misrepresented their qualifications or who had invalid qualifications. “These fraudsters will be named and shamed‚“ he said. Ramaphosa commented that it was crucial for the “water-tight verification processes” that were undertaken in the public service at national and provincial level to be extended to other public institutions and entities. Welcoming the announcement by Ramaphosa, CEO of screening company EMPS, Kirsten Halcrow, said in a statement that the clampdown on fake academic qualifications was “long overdue and would go a long way towards cleaning up South Africa’s thriving fraudulent qualifications racket”. She pointed out that 2015 was proving to be a “record year” for credentials cheats, with criminal record checks for prospective employees already topping 12% – a 1% increase over the full year’s figure for 2014. A more disturbing aspect of this, she added, was that 38% of candidates who tested positive for a criminal record were repeat offenders, with some job applicants having up to 20 convictions. But the good news is that background screening procedures are becoming increasingly sophisticated and it is now almost impossible to beat the system. However, another issue is that with increasingly more international online training institutions offering qualifications, it is becoming more difficult to verify qualifications. Halcrow said that 7.6% of tertiary qualifications submitted to her company for verification in the first half of 2015 were unverifiable. “In some instances the qualifications could not be verified as the institutions had long since ceased to exist,” she said. INSERT & CAPTION Fraudsters will be named and shamed. – Cyril-Ramaphosa