By Sylvester Samba.
The Ministry of Technical and Higher Education (MTHE) has given a two weeks ultimatum to all academic and administrative staff in Higher and Technical Education Institutions with fake degrees to resign. This decision was reached following a joint communiqué on accredited university and award of fake degrees in Sierra Leone signed on Tuesday 26th April, 2022.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education, Mr. Gilbert Cooper has in a press release issued yesterday called on all academic and administrative staff in Higher and Technical Education Institutions who acquired their certificates, diplomas and degrees in unaccredited institutions and used same for employment and/or promotion in their respective institutions to resign within the next two weeks starting from Thursday 12th May to Wednesday 26th May, 2022 or get summarily dismissed.
“Any staff who fails to comply with this instruction will be in breach of the joint communiqué and will be summarily dismissed”, the press release warned.
Earlier, the ACC has called on all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies through their Human Resource Divisions/Units or Internal Audit Units to immediately carry out verification audit on all certificates used by employees that had gained employment, promotions and other benefits within their respective institutions of work and furnish the outcomes of same to the ACC by way of referral.
As a parallel approach, the ACC has set up a Task Force comprising Investigators and Prevention Officers, to progressively do a credential integrity review for Public Officers with the mandate to look into employments, promotions of persons within the broad spectrum of the Civil and Public Service, who would have willfully and knowingly used or submitted what would amount to “fake” Certificates/Degrees to confer Advantage on themselves – as the conduct, once established may constitute a corruption offence as stipulated in Section 128(3) of the Anti-Corruption Act 2008 as amended in 2019.
