2,000 Fake Engineering Degrees Uncovered
Some 2,000 fake engineering certificates were uncovered in 2014 including those of 40 Saudi male and female engineers, local media quoted an official source at the Saudi Council of Engineers (SCE) as saying.
Five countries were detected to have the highest rates of the fake engineering certificates, with the Philippines taking the first place at 460 certificates, or 23 percent of the total. It was followed by India (250), Egypt (180), Pakistan (110) and Jordan (50), the source said.
The fake engineering certificates originated from more than 200 universities world-wide, Aleqtesadiya daily said. According to the source, since the beginning of the year 2015, 10 fake certificates have been discovered. If strict penalties were not applied, the number of bogus certificates would climb to 150 by the end of the year, he warned.
Last November, President of the SCE Hamad Al-Shaqawi said that a list containing the names of all engineers who have forged their trade certificates would be published soon. “They will be totally banned from practicing their profession in a bid to minimize forgery cases in this area,” he said.
Although some 1,700 certificate were announced as forgeries at the time by the SCE, no one has so far been penalized, the paper said. Al-Shaqawi said that the council’s role is limited to uncovering forgeries, while prosecuting the people responsible for forgeries remains the responsibility of law-enforcement authorities. He said that implementing the punishment for forgery — which is a two-year prison sentence and defamation — should be applied without hesitation to those who have forged the certificates.
Bogus certificates were not limited to the engineering sector, but are present in the heath sector too.