Luweero District Service Commission has recommended the dismissal of 27 civil servants for uttering forged academic papers to gain employment. The affected people include Primary schools teachers, a nursing assistant and a porter.
The affected workers have served the district for over 10 years.
Their case was forwarded to the District Service Commission by the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Mr Godfrey Kuruhiira.
They were expected to defend themselves on allegations of uttering forged academic documents to gain employment.
This followed a validation exercise that was conducted by the Public Service ministry which found them in possession of questionable academic papers.
Mr Richard Ssembajjwe, the chairperson Luweero District Service Commission, said that the accused people were summoned twice in December 2019 to defend themselves but declined to show up.
Mr Ssembajjwe says that one of the accused people turned up but disappeared before he was interviewed.
He said that they evaluated evidence brought against the accused people by the district and were satisfied that they forged their academic papers.
Mr Ssembajjwe explained that the commission resolved to dismiss the affected civil servants saying they will soon write to the CAO asking him to act against the affected people.
Mr Bernard Okello, the Luweero District Human Resource Officer, said that they were waiting for recommendations from the Commission before taking final action.
He, however, said that the accused people have since been deleted from the payroll.
Mr Okello said that he suspects that the affected people declined to turn up because they didn’t have genuine papers to present to the commission to clear them.
He said that the accused civil servants, earlie appeared before a team of officials from the Inspectorate of Government and the Public Service Ministry that investigated them for forgery but failed to present genuine academic papers.
None of the accused people was willing to comment on the allegations.
In 2016, eight Secondary School teachers fled Luweero District after police issued arrest warrants for them for allegedly forging their appointment and posting letters. The implicated teachers were accused of presenting forged letters to the Chief Administrative Officer between December 2015 and February 2016.
The district unearthed the forgery when they asked the Education Ministry to authenticate the appointment of 64 teachers and transfer in the 2015/2016 financial year.
Recently, the Education and Sports Ministry dismissed 15,706 teachers for allegedly using forged academic papers to register under the Teacher Management Information System (TMIS).
Ministry officials said that some of the teachers whose registration was rejected presented forged academic documents while others didn’t upload all the necessary documents.