Report exposes depth of fake papers scam at Mombasa Port

The port of Mombasa. Documents from the Kenya Ports Authority have indicated that hundreds of workers could have been hired based on false academic documents. [PHOTO: MAARUFU MOHAMED/STANDARD]

Confidential documents filed in court in Mombasa have shed new light on the fake certificate employment saga at the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), which has already sacked 132 disgraced workers, including 25 lower and middle-level managers.

These documents have spurred fresh concerns over the actual extent of the rot and number of those lacking genuine papers by questioning records made by the Human Resource Department between 2012 and August, last year.

“There were 962 union and 423 management employees who indicated in their employee detail forms that they possess certain qualifications, which information was captured in the HR Master Data,” says a forensic audit report that says a KPA committee appointed to verify certificates “observed that these qualifications were non-existent”.

The report does not say if these “non-existent” qualifications were false or illegal, and does not also say if the HR department conducted a further verification to ascertain how or why this data was entered into the HR database.

In addition, the report has raised the possibility that four degree certificates, purportedly issued to some employees at the port by foreign universities, could still be under investigation. It is not clear if KPA contacted the alleged foreign universities after the defunct Commission for Higher Education declined to authenticate the certificates last year.

The CHE “advised the (Kenya Ports) Authority to independently submit them (foreign certificates) to the concerned administering and professional authorities for validation as the Commission does not deal with authentication of certificates”.

However, an internal report presented to the KPA board on August 22, last year, also declares that the committee that conducted an investigation of the port’s 7,087 employees, including 1,651 managers, did not have the “capacity/expertise to determine the authenticity of all employees’ certificates”.

And other documents confirm that the Kenya National Examination Council investigated a total of 302 certificates, including those produced by workers for the defunct Kenya Certificate of Education (KCE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).