Makerere Students Lose Cash in Exam Permit Scam

Dozens of students in Makerere and other public universities have lost large amounts of cash in an attempt to forge examination permits after failing to pay tuition.

Whereas in the past some students successfully used the forged cards to enter examination rooms, in the last one year Makerere instituted new security measures that enable the invigilators to detect them.

Although Sunday Vision could not obtain comprehensive statistics, the practice has been widespread. For instance, at the Makerere University College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) alone, over 40 students were apprehended between May 1 and May 25, 2012, according to a report by Gordon Murangira, the registrar of examinations at the College.

For years, a well-organised racket of fraudsters, working through a network of brokers, have been forging the permits for students. The scam has been causing financial loss to the university by enabling students to sit for examinations for several semesters without paying tuition. The certificate is issued only to students who have fully paid tuition for the semester.

A female student of Mass Communication who was nabbed last year, confessed that the permit was forged for her on Nasser Road, Kampala. She learnt about the forgery from a fellow student who had done it successfully.

"I remember withdrawing sh200,000 from my account to start the process," she says.

She paid the money to a man by the street on Nasser Road. She gave him her passport-size photo, a classmate's original examination permit and a copy of her examination permit for the previous semester. "Call me after two days," the man said.

Anxious, she decided to call after one day, but the man's number was off. She endured a sleepless night, but the following day, she received a call from a different man, telling her the permit was ready. When she went to pick the permit, she did not get to meet the author. Instead, he dropped an envelope with the permit on the pavement at the City Square, and directed her by phone to pick it while he watched from a distance.

With the forged permit, she successfully sat for two papers but was apprehended during her third paper. She was among the 45 students who were dismissed from the university for breaking university rules and are currently in court over charges of forgery. If found guilty, she will spend years behind bars as stipulated under section 19(2) of penal code.

To confirm the fraud, a Sunday Vision reporter went to Nasser Road, a busy hub for small-scale graphic design and printing enterprises. A broker offered to provide a forged permit within two days for sh250,000.

The broker first interrogated him before leading him through a narrow corridor to a room dotted with several computers, including a Mackintosh. However, upon discovering the identity of the reporter later, he switched his phone off and subsequent efforts to trace him failed.

To an ordinary person, the forged document looks exactly like the genuine permit, but the invigilators are familiar with the security features that distinguish them. Every semester, the university makes changes in the permits that they also display to the inspectors who supervise the exams.

A source in the IT department in the senate, who was also part of the team responsible for the unique features on the permits, told this paper that the university keeps adding or changing security features to the permit.

A permit might look similar to that of the previous semester, but has a distinguishing mark that is not obvious. Sources revealed that the invigilators and inspectors are taken through these hidden features just a week to the examinations, a move that seals the chances of the permits being forged.

Edward Lwanyeko, the senior assistant registrar for the School of Forestry and Environment, says the decision to issue the permits only one week before exams is a strategy to deny students time for forging.

An accountant at the university who preferred anonymity said the forgeries explain why the university's revenue figures were dropping.

"We managed to track those that have been cheating the university through forgery. One of the students apprehended was a third year student, but he had never paid any tuition and we wondered how that happened," she explained.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences academic registrar, Gordon Murangira, explains that despite improved security features, they need additional measures to weed out those with fake permits.

"You can find over 1,000 students sitting for a single exam and you have only four supervisors. It is quite difficult for one to give an extra eye on every student's exam permit, so some go unnoticed," he said.

The university academic registrar, Alfred Masikye, admits that the anomaly remains a stumbling block in the fight against forgery not only for examination permits, but also other university documents. As a result, the university is looking at other measures of eliminating this habit, which has not only cost the university billions of shillings, but also its reputation.

"Due to increasing cases of tuition defaulters, the university announced recently that it would strictly enforce a policy whereby students are required to pay 60% of the tuition by the sixth week of the semester. Students who fail to comply with this will not be allowed to sit for coursework, tests or even examinations," Masikye added. Students recently went on strike over this policy.

Other public universities have also fallen prey to forgery, including Kyambogo University, where 12 students were apprehended last year over forging examination cards. In 2011, Gulu University apprehended four students for forging University Identity.

While being tough on fraud, Makerere University has decided to give a hearing to the implicated students. Tomorrow (Monday 18th Feb), fifteen students of the schools of Liberal and Performing Arts, Languages, Literature and Communication will appear before the Joint Schools Irregularities Appeals Committee to defend themselves.