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Allegedly Fake Medical Doctors
Allegedly Fake Medical Doctors
Siddhi B Ranjitkar
Recently, Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB) has arrested more than 30 doctors that had allegedly graduated the medical schools submitting the fake certificates of the basic sciences. Their medical certificates were not faked. They had taken the Nepal Medical Council examinations for entry into the medical jobs. They did pass. Why such a fussy of snatching some of the doctors even from the operation theater on the suspicions of being doctors on the falsified basic sciences certificates. The arrest had humiliated not only the arrested doctors wrongly allegedly using fake certificates but also the families of the victims, and even those of the released later on without any charges. Is it not the harsh treatment of the people holding such prestigious jobs in the Nepalese society?
Speaking to the anchor of the ‘antar-samd’ program of Radio Nepal on the morning of June 23, 2016, the renowned medical practitioner Dr Anjani Kumar Jha had cleared up some of the facts about the allegedly fake doctors. He said that the government had failed in setting up an office at any one of the ministries to verify the basic education certificates used for further higher education causing such havoc not only in the medical sector but also in other sectors, too. Nobody knows how many officials are serving in the civil service, army and police even at high offices holding either the false certificates or the certificates of higher education from colleges and universities done on the falsified basic education certificates.
Dr Jha said that most of the medical practitioners arrested on the charges of using the falsified intermediate sciences certificates had been the returnees from the foreign countries after the graduation. His main question is why the government has been so liberal to send thousands of Nepalese to study abroad without verifying their basic education certificates particularly those certificates obtained from the neighboring country.
How the doctors graduated based on the fake basic science certificates have surfaced is the interesting question Dr Jha has answered. A number of doctors studied in the foreign countries submitting the enhanced basic sciences certificates had passed the Nepal Medical Council in one go but some of them had repeatedly failed in such examinations, and even some of them went on taking the examinations for more than 10 times causing the suspicion of their ability to understand even the basic sciences. That led to the finding of the medical practitioners holding the falsified-enhanced basic sciences certificates.
Dr Jha said that the media had been harsh to the medical association publishing the news about the association supporting the allegedly false doctors without going into the depth of what the association had been doing and going to do. He said that the association was not against the arrest of the allegedly fake doctors but only the association had asked for giving them the opportunity to present the facts. He gave the example of one doctor arrested on the charge of being a fake, and then later on released finding it a wrong person came to him, and complained about what the CIB officials did him.
It was the humiliation the CIB personnel had caused to the innocent doctors arrested on the charges of holding fake certificates. The doctors caught up by the CIB have lost the image in the society immediately and their career has been darkened even briefly getting in the custody of the CIB officials. Who have been responsible for such loss of the career benefits, and image in the society? Certainly, the CIB officials that needs to be responsible for causing so much misery to the innocent doctors have performed their duty lightly rather than performing seriously as the most responsible personnel to find the culprits. The question has been how the CIB officials perform the jobs of doing such serious work of finding falsified certificates users but doing very lightly warranting to look into the performances of those CIB officials that have perform their duty so irresponsibly.
How the bogus certificates got the entry into the pristine Nepalese education system is the question to answer. Historically, most of the Nepalese have the basic education in the Nepalese schools. After the basic education in Nepal then, the students went to the foreign countries for higher education. That was the time when the then Shah-Rana rulers did not permit to open any educational institutions in Nepal. The despotic rulers were so concerned with the educated citizens would demand the basic human rights they had denied at any cost.
In the 1960s when the monarchy was strong and firmly rooted in the Nepalese administration then the royals and the people serving them in the palace became above the law means they did not need to follow the regular law prescribed for one and all including the monarch. The evidence of such naked behavior of the so-called elites serving the royals exposed when they sent their sons, daughters, and relatives holding only the School Living Certificates to the then USSR for studying in universities and academic institutes. Fortunately for those students, the Russians had set the tradition of giving the heavy dose of the basic sciences to the foreign students during the preparatory course run for teaching them the Russian language for a year. However, they remained without the certificates of the basic sciences.
Those sons, daughters and relatives of VIP completed the university course skipping at least the two-year study of the intermediate course required for anybody to study any subjects at the higher level. This is an advantage those guys had gained over contemporary colleagues while serving in the State agencies.
However, the question of the validity of the certificates of the master’s degree without completing the regular intermediate course in Nepal was raised at the higher level of the academics and of the public in general but their voices were subdued by the strong iron hands of those serving at the palace and the occupants of the palace, too. Master’s degrees without the intermediate sciences certificates were validated for those sons and daughters and relatives of royalties and of their servants not of the common folks. The story ended here and no more students with SLC went to the USSR for higher education. It happened as if it was done only for those VIP offspring to go to the USSR for higher studies, as other countries did not accept such students.
Then, the panchayat system came crashing down in 1990, and the multiparty system leaders took over. Elections were held in 1991 for the parliament in which the NC leaders won the majority seats in the parliament. NC leader Girija Prasad Koirala became the prime minister. A cadre of NC, and their leaders including Girija thought that it was then the time for them to enjoy anything coming out of the power as did the panchayat leaders including the then monarch had enjoyed. This is a hangover from the thinking of BP Koirala in 1960 when he took office of the elected prime minister.
What the second elected Prime Minster Girija Prasad Koirala after incidentally his brother the first elected Prime Minster BP Koirala did was that he fired all the senior civil servants on the charges of allegedly being faithful to the panchayat system, and close to another political party particularly the CPN-UML, and then he hired many people not having the required academic certificates. Then, what to do was the question. Somebody came out with the immediate solution of buying the certificates in the Indian market. Buying certificates in India for getting job at the State agency in Nepal became a regular business. Thousands of such people got the job. Some of them reached the influential positions in the State agencies. Most of them have been enjoying the State-given pension.
Why did not the concerned State agencies verify the foreign certificates? Then another question shot back: why should they verify the certificates? NC government had appointed those officials supposed to do all sorts of verification for controlling irregularities in the administration, in hiring and firing, and in accounting and so on. So, the third question was how could they do anything against any irregularities in any administration they themselves had been causing. Those sincere officials could not risk getting fired immediately attempting to sort out the irregularities in army, civil and police administration.
Thus, the people holding bogus certificates got the entry into the Nepalese administration: civil, police and army. Not only the doctors, engineers, pilots have faked their intermediate sciences certificates but also many civil, army and police officials also had done so. Now, the question is whether some of the CIB officials might have used doubtful certificates or not for getting such a responsible job in view of doing the job so lightly causing so much misery to the sincere and honest doctors that had been caught and kept in custody before they found out their certificates were genuine.
Those doctors caught up for their no faults and kept in custody without proper investigation needed to demand the compensation for the loss of reputation, and publicly redeem their esteem of being good and responsible doctors. They need to go to the prime minister for getting the compensation. If the prime minister does not respond positively, then they need to go to the Commission on Investigation into Abuse of Authority (CIAA) for filing the case against the CIB officials for abusing their authority, and arresting the doctors indiscriminately. If that did not resolve the problem then the doctors needed to go to the court and demand to redeem their lost esteem.
Concerning the doctors that had enhanced or falsified their intermediate sciences certificates, the government of Nepal needed to make a decision on pardoning not only the doctors but also the engineers, pilots, and other educational degree holders based on the falsified certificates and holding different positions in the army, civil and police administration once and for all. Then, the government needs to make a law for severely punishing the people using the false certificates for jobs or for higher education. Also the government needs to set up an agency at the Ministry of Education to verify any foreign certificates of basic education qualifications required for the higher education in Nepal and abroad before sending them to study.
June 28, 2016
