Forged Educational Qualifications by Employment Pass and S Pass Holders in Infocomm Technology Industry

11 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for Manpower (a) how many Employment Pass and S Pass holders have submitted fabricated or forged education qualification certifications in the past three years in the ICT industry; and (b) whether the Ministry will review and work with only reputable overseas educational institutions with a proven track record for approval of both Employment Pass and S Pass applications.

The Minister for Manpower (Dr Tan See Leng): Mdm Deputy Speaker, good afternoon. From 2018 to 2020, 11 Employment Pass and S Pass holders working in the infocomm technology (ICT) industry were found to have submitted false qualifications to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). Their work passes were revoked and they were permanently barred from working in Singapore.

All employers have the primary responsibility to ensure the authenticity and quality of their candidates’ qualifications when submitting work pass applications.

MOM also conducts additional checks by screening the qualifications submitted through our database of institutions. This database is reviewed regularly through our scan of open source reports and research from third-party screening organisations. For applications containing qualifications from institutions that are not in our database, we require employers to submit verification proof from third-party screening organisations to ensure that the qualifications submitted are accredited. We will reject applications containing fake or unaccredited qualifications.

MOM takes a firm stance against foreigners who submit false qualifications to fraudulently obtain work passes. Besides revocation of work passes and debarment from employment in Singapore, we may also prosecute offenders for false declaration under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, which carries a fine of up to $20,000 or up to two years’ imprisonment, or both.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Mr Gan Thiam Poh.

Mr Gan Thiam Poh (Ang Mo Kio): I thank the Minister for the comprehensive reply. May I know how fast can MOM expedite to screen all these non-accredited result slips that are submitted? Can MOM also elaborate whether they would review their process to pick up the cases faster?

Dr Tan See Leng: I thank Mr Gan for his supplementary questions. At MOM, we use a predictive fraud model and we stratify the academic institutions according to different levels of risk. For the highest risk, we require the employers to submit, as I have alluded to earlier on, verification proof from a third-party screening organisation as part of the work pass application process. These verification agencies have been pre-assessed by MOM and they are listed on our MOM website. If there is no verification proof that confirms that the diploma and degree qualifications declared are genuine, the application will be rejected.

Of course, there are those on a lower-risk and those that are medium-risk. At different categories, we have a different response mechanism. I hope that answers the Member's question.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Mr Leon Perera.

Mr Leon Perera (Aljunied): Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for his answer. Just one point of clarification. When MOM classifies educational institutions by risks, what is the basis for that classification? Is it that certain educational institutions are deemed to be sort of less reputable or less well-accredited and, therefore, they are deemed to be higher-risk and, therefore, third-party verification will be required by the employer?

If so, then what is the assurance that lower-risk institutions may not also be subject to fake educational credentials? For example, someone may fake a degree from a well-known or reputable university. So, what is the assurance in those cases? My supplementary question is, really, what is the basis for this risk tiering?

Dr Tan See Leng: I thank Mr Leon Perera for his question. For accreditation checks, we have maintained a database over the years as we screened the qualifications, whenever employers submit the respective to-be-hired employees' qualifications. Over the years, as we built the database, we have within our system and also, we compare them with the database from third-party verification agencies that we work closely with. I have also said earlier on that the list of these third-party verification agencies is available on our website. So, through the years, we have built that. We use a combination of data analytics; we screen them. And from that, we then ascertain a risk stratification strategy in which we match all of these applications when they come to us through this database that we have.

To the Member's point about those from accredited universities, or even some of them, Ivy League universities, and whether they can fake these degrees, we do have, from time to time, verification, independent checks where we check with the university concerned. Obviously, we do not do this on 100% of all applications submitted, but based on our predictive analytics, when we find that there is reason for us to have suspicion – and we do have a very high index of suspicion – we then activate this other route where we actually call them for independent checks.