By Lynford Simpson and Trudy Simpson, Staff ReportersTHE REGISTRAR General's Department (RGD), has sent home six employees who have been implicated in a scheme to defraud the department, The Gleaner has learnt.
The six allegedly helped a woman to change her original documents including her birth certificate, but Dr. Patricia Holness, head of the RGD, while confirming that the six were no longer employed by the department, said she was not aware of any cases where RGD employees had helped persons to falsify documents.
She said the case of the six employees involved "some monies not being brought to account" and that they were dismissed for breaching RGD's Human resources regulations.
The six had initially been suspended and an internal investigation conducted, a source told The Gleaner.
Dr. Holness said that the six had in fact been dismissed since March 7, 2003 but according to other reports, the six employees turned up for work last Friday and the police were called in. They were questioned and later fired.
Det. Supt. Errol Samuels, head of the Police Fraud Squad, confirmed that the RGD has been in touch with his department on the matter. He said he was awaiting more information in order to proceed.
He added though that the police were called in occasionally to probe cases at the RGD. "From time to time we have been asked to look into the addition of children's names to birth certificates and we know the reason for this. You know sometimes they want to get visas for some (persons)... so the visa racket."
Regarding the current case, Dr. Holness told The Gleaner that the Central Village police were initially called in but said the documents were being turned over to the Fraud Squad. She said
the RGD do not fire employees based on fraud or on police investigations but that employees are dismissed "once they have wilfully refused to obey policies-and procedures-manual. It's gross misconduct and they know they can be fired," she said.
Dr. Holness said she was not aware of any other case being investigated by the police which involve the RGD's staff. However, "from time to time customers present documents which when checked against our records do not match and these are turned over to the Fraud Squad. We also cooperate with the Fraud Squad who approach us from time to time with questionable documents which they receive from other agencies and departments," Dr. Holness said.
She said that the general approach to breaches at the RGD is that "where we find them, we move with alacrity. We do a lot of surprise checks and act on them. We are ensuring that the RGD is a corruption-free entity."
