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Thousands of civil servant CVs unchecked

South Africa's public service has thousands of civil servants and other employees whose qualifications are suspect, says the public service watchdog, the Public Service Commission (PSC).

It has found that 64% of government departments still employ officials without first verifying their qualifications - ignoring a 2002 cabinet directive to verify the qualifications of all applicants before being appointed.

In 2005 all 29 national departments and all provincial departments were again instructed to audit qualifications of employees to determine whether they were authentic. Of the 79 departments only nine have completed the entire verification process.

In a report three years later, the PSC was justifiably frustrated that many government officials were reluctant to comply with the request to supply their degrees, diplomas and certificates for verification. Not entirely unexpected, the commission has also met with stiff resistance from many officials who were resistant and uncooperative. Many officials cited the loss of their certificates as a reason for non-submission.

"This is a shocking state of affairs and completely unacceptable," says Lionel Strong, general manager of GriffithsReid security consultants. "These culprits are merely seeking excuses and are trying to dodge any kind of investigation."

Profound implications

Interestingly, 16 fraudulent qualifications were discovered during verification by the nine departments that have completed the process. PSC director-general Odette Ramsingh said government departments were blatantly disregarding a cabinet instruction when they appointed people without first verifying their qualifications. They complained that the process of verifying qualifications was time-consuming and costly.

In the meantime and of even greater concern was that 64% of government departments only verified the qualifications of new employees after the person has started working.

Failure to verify qualifications also created massive headaches for departments once they realised a new employee had falsified qualifications. Not surprisingly, at least 41% of departments had reported that officials were slow to have their qualifications verified.

Other problems to verify qualifications include academic information not being readily available, some tertiary institutions where officials studied had either closed or had been merged with others or the officials still owed the institution funds and the institution had withheld certificates.

Strong has encouraged the PSC to continue pressing for background checks as well as checking officials' criminal records. "They are working with tax payers' money and there is more than enough evidence already that the Auditor General is far from happy about the way budgets are being wrecked through sheer incompetence."

But there are some inherent lessons for the private sector: Nobody can afford to simply appoint a veritable stranger without making sure that the person's qualifications are genuine and that he or she can actually do what is expected of them. "If you do not, you might as well kiss a lot of money goodbye," says Strong.

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