A Ministry of Education official stationed in Eldoret County was on Thursday arraigned and charged with five counts of forgery for fabricating academic qualifications to secure employment at the government department.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) says that the suspect, Joash Kimurgor Kirwa, forged a Moi University degree certificate alongside academic transcripts to land a job at the State Department for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
“He was today arraigned at Eldoret Law Courts in whose jurisdiction he was recruited, where five counts of forgery were preferred against him,” the DCI said in a statement on X.
Kirwa pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on a Ksh.200,00 cash bail. His case has been scheduled for pre-trial mentioning on February 26.
The development comes just two days after the Public Service Commission (PSC) revealed that there are some public servants in critical government parastatals who acquired their positions using fake certificates.
The alarming revelation, according to PSC’s announcement on Tuesday, shows that most of the individuals are in the Ministry of Interior, the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and the Geothermal and Development Corporation, a parastatal under the Ministry of Energy.
Addressing the media then, PSC Chairman Ambassador Anthony Muchiri said that the aforementioned individuals are part of 2,067 forgery cases discovered in an investigation they launched in October 2022.
The probe targeted 331 institutions among them 52 Ministries, State Departments and Agencies (MDAs), 239 State corporations and Semi-Autonomous Government Agencies and 40 public universities.
PSC subsequently recommended that all cases be referred to the DCI for prosecution and recovery of money and assets gained from the fraudulent positions.
