Tripoli, 6 May 2013:
An Egyptian man claiming to be a surgeon and working under bogus medical qualifications has been arrested in . . .[restrict]Khoms.
The man, who claimed to be a specialist surgeon, had been working at the 17 February Medical Centre in Khoms when allegations of sexual harassment by female colleagues led to his arrest by the Supreme Security Committee (SSC).
When questioned, the suspect apparently admitted that he was not actually a surgeon. He said instead that he was a gynaecologist who had previously worked at a private clinic specialising in women’s health in Khoms.
The director of the private clinic, however, said that the suspect had worked there for less than a week. Six days into his job, after failing to help a patient in labour, he walked out of the hospital and disappeared. The director said he had submitted a report about the incident to the Doctors’ Association in March this year.
The suspect was later employed by the Khoms Ministry of Health to work as a general surgeon at the 17 February Medical Centre, a public hospital, until his arrest for allegedly using obscene words to female colleagues and harassing them by telephone.
An investigation into the suspect’s credentials revealed his qualifications, a PhD and a Masters’ Degree in obstetrics and gynaecology, to be fake, according to the SSC’s official Facebook page.
The suspect said that he had paid two young Libyan printers to help him forge the certificates, less than a month after entering the country. The two men, who apparently admitted to forging the documents, were arrested.
All three men now face charges of forgery and their cases have been passed to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
An increasing number of Egyptians have been using illegal means, including fake medical certificates and forged visas to get jobs in Libya. The Egyptian Minister of Manpower and Immigration, Khaled Al-Azhari, has said that many Egyptian workers have recently been deported from Libya for holding such forgeries, according to Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.
He admitted that “large numbers” of Egyptians were still obtaining fake documents but said that the ministry was taking urgent steps to regulate prospective workers and stop them from entering Libya illegally.
Mohamed Hassan, from the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, said that the Libyan embassy in Cairo had been exacerbating the situation. “The embassy delays the process of Libyan visas for several weeks and gives no specific or fixed time for passport handling,” Hassan said. He added that this encouraged Egyptian nationals pursue illegal ways of entering the country.
Hassan said that the embassy’s decision on 30 April to stop handling passports has caused a backlog of visa applications, and called on the revelevant authorities to find a solution. [/restrict]
