Under a cloud of doubt

According to a self-admitted forger interviewed by BBC News, an average of 35 Filipinos procure fake nursing diplomas each day on Recto Avenue in Manila. Each diploma can be had for P1,500, the man with the “golden hand” told the BBC and a team of UK police investigators following up on the case of convicted killer Victorino Chua, a Filipino nurse.

                                                                                             

Chua drew a long jail term for contaminating IV drips and medical ampoules with insulin, leading to the death of two patients and injury to at least 20 others in a Greater Manchester hospital. His case is on appeal, but UK investigators are now focusing on the possibility that at least two of his medical training certificates were fakes.

The UK team also suspected that it was not Chua who sat on his licensure examination because the photo on his  exam permit looked “nowhere near” like Chua’s nursing student and graduation photos. They could not be certain though because the permit photo could not be examined using facial recognition software because it was of such low quality.

A former registrar of the now-shuttered Galang Medical Center – itself a known diploma mill – admitted that Chua’s school records may have been altered. Nonetheless, UK police and media teams left the Philippines without any definitive proof that Chua’s documents are indeed fakes or that another person took the exam for him.

For the British, it was enough for them to see how easy and cheap to get any and all kinds of documents on Recto Avenue for them to alert their Nursing and Midwifery Council to be on the lookout for fake documents submitted by Filipinos applying for jobs or even those already employed in the UK.

Which  brings us to the question: Why can’t the government go after and shut down once and for all the forgers of Recto Avenue? What we have seen are police operations against the forgers that seemed to be merely “for show” because if they were not, how come the same people have continued to operate for years now?

The problem is unless the Philippine is able to guarantee that the documents of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are authentic, all OFWs, including the majority who have genuine documents, would be under a cloud of suspicion. -end-

 Image by nextcity.org