Details have emerged about the extent to which the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) employees sought to secure employment and develop their careers using fictitious academic and professional certificates.

And when KPA, which runs the Port of Mombasa, began to audit its employees in 2012,  some of the 136 workers accused of forging the papers fled, fearing arrest and prosecution. Documents filed at the Industrial Court on August 13 this year reveal some departmental heads in KPA  were either negligent or accomplices of the scam.

And now some parties in the suit are seeking to stop investigation and dismissal of the 136 workers targeted; they have asked that KPA be held accountable for the mess.

The documents attached to papers filed by the affected KPA workers’ lawyer Danson Mungatana on Friday last week allege that besides forging certificates for examinations, the affected employees never sat examinations they claimed they had. Some of them allegedly manufactured professional and academic certificates indicating they studied at schools that do not actually exist.

One of those accused of using a forged Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) claims he never presented the alleged certificate to KPA. Benard Juma Wabushi, from the Container Operations Department, is indicted for allegedly presenting false academic papers indicating he sat the now defunct Kenya Certificate Education (KCE) examination in 1983  at Bukhalalire Secondary School. KPA says that “during the 1983 KCE examination, Bukhalalire Secondary School was centre code number 61002 and not 63003 as indicated in the purported copy of certificate presented to KNEC (Kenya National Examination Council) for authentication.”

Some of the employees are from the Engineering Department but have admitted that the only academic certificate they possess is that of Kenya Certificate of Primary School (KCPE). For instance, Erick Onditi says he is a KCPE certificate holder with a Grade II certificate in Plant Mechanical, obtained from the National Youth Service before he was employed as a casual worker in July 2001. But two years later in July 2003, his terms were converted to permanent and he was immediately promoted to Grade III engineer.

And Japheth Ontiri Ngare, who works at the Conventional Cargo Operation, is accused of faking a KCSE certificate claiming he sat KCSE examination at Gesiaga Secondary School in 1995 under index number 706110061, but KPA says the number does not exist in KNEC records.

Begging for demotion

KPA alleges in a letter dated April 17 that in 1995, Gesiaga Secondary School registered 52 candidates for the KCSE examination and therefore the last index number was 706110052 and the index number 706110061 “is non-existent in the KNEC database for the 1995 KCSE examination.”

 

Ali Juma Masha, a clerk at the Human Resource Management Department, is accused of manufacturing papers to show he sat KCSE examination in 1992 at Mau Mau Memorial Secondary School. “The centre name Mau Mau Memorial Secondary School and the centre code 43003 are non-existent in the KNEC database for the 1992 KCSE examination,” according to KPA in a letter dated February 17 this year.

In the court documents, the Dock Workers Union Secretary General Simon Sang’ pleads that affected employees should be pardoned and demoted instead of being sacked and prosecuted.

Reports indicate that the original list of employees from all departments, including managers that were under investigation, was over 400 but the list appears to have been whittled down after internal investigations. Last week, The Standard on Sunday established that some employees involved in the scam, including managers, have opted to resign as some Mombasa politicians demanded an independent audit on the KPA workforce.