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| Kathmandu, Tuesday April 16, 2002 Baishakh 03, 2059. |
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Ministry of Education books
507 ‘fake’ certificate holders
By Nitya Nanda Timsina
KATHMANDU, April 14:Ministry of Education and
Sports will very soon handover 507 certificates of teachers working in various schools
around the country to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA)
for leagl action, a higly placed source at the Ministry disclosed Monday.
In the first phase, the Ministry has identified
507 certificates as "fake" ones. The holders of such certificates come from at
least ten districts across the country. The Ministry started crackingdown on teachers
submitting fake certificates for employment last year.
"We will soon handover them to the CIAA for
legal action," Ram Prasad Bashyal, Under Secretray at the Ministry of Education and
Sports told The Kathmandu Post Monday. He refused to reveal the exact date for the
handover, but added that a board meeting would decide on the matter soon.
In a letter dispatched to the Ministry last
week, the CIAA had directed the Ministry to hand over all the suspected "fake"
certificates of all those earning handsome salaries and declare them as counterfeit ones.
Arguments in the education circle run that these teachers have been responsible for
bringing down the quality of education in the country and adding woes to the country’s
already ailing education system.
The Ministry has prepared a list of more than 20
universities, many of them in Indian states of Bihar and Uttarpradesh from where most of
these teachers are suspected to have obtained their certificates. Those in the list
include: the Bihar University, Bihar; the Mujafarpur University, Bihar; the Sampurnanda
Sanskrit University, Varanasi; the Mithila University, Bihar; the Calcutta University and
the Manipur University.
In the first phase, the Ministry will forward to
the CIAA the list of an estimated 450 teachers in ten districts. The districts include:
Sindhupalchowk, Humla, Bhaktapur, Bajhang, Bajura, Okhaldhunga, Rasuwa, Jajarkot, Manang
and Lamjung.
The officails also indicated that the number of
such teachers might be "alarmingly high" once all the certificates are made
available for scrutiny in the next phase.
A source at the School Administarion Section of
the Ministry said there might be hundreds of teachers obtaining their degree without
appearing in any kind of exams.
The Ministry officials, however, did not provide
much details about the number of teachers in rest of the districts citing difficulties to
go through the "cumbersome lists" in details. However, a Ministry estimate shows
that Sindhupalchowk has the largest number of teachers holding fake-certificates with the
number standing at a whopping 140, while Manang, a less populated district, has only four.
There are about 10,7853 teachers currently
serving in about 20,400 public schools across the country, and on average around 100
teachers could be holding fake certificates in one district. Besides, there are 3,500
higher secondary schools and 2,600 lower secondary schools under the category of community
schools, where many of these teachers have been teaching.
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