Of forgery, exams and election day
Sharon Mathala | Friday August 22, 2014 12:03
Mapeu said that the cases were recorded over a period of three weeks. He said that they received the report from the Department of Tertiary Education Funding (DTEF) that there had been some individuals who had forged their BGSCE certificates.
“We understand that the former students had applied for government sponsorship using these fake certificates. They would change the original symbol to a symbol that would favour them to be granted government sponsorship,” he said.
Mapeu said that they have not yet established what chemical the former students used to change their symbols as investigations are underway. He added that the six were arrested and brought in for questioning on Tuesday, but have since been released from police custody.
“They are most likely to be charged with forgery, which means that if found guilty they may be sentenced to a prison term not exceeding three years,” he said, adding that this is a serious crime with real consequences they should desist from.
For their part, the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) has told Mmegi that they are not aware of such a case before the police.
Meanwhile, in a separate matter, the BEC will have to change the examination schedule dates after the recent government announcement that October 24 is declared an election day.
Exams for Junior Certificate (JC) have two exam papers affected. The Setswana Paper 2 and Design and Technology (DnT) paper have been moved to November 4 and 7 respectively. The Setswana paper will be written at 1030hrs while students will sit for the DnT exam at 1430hrs.
For the BGCSE, only Commerce Paper 1 will be affected by the general elections. The paper has since been moved to November 14 at 1400hrs.
The BGCSE French paper 2 will written on election day at 0800hrs because the examination has been set in accordance with other countries and cannot be rescheduled.
“BEC would like to assure the candidates that the French examination would be conducted in accordance with the set standards. Consultation is ongoing with the examination centres that have registered candidates for French to ensure the smooth running of examination without affecting the right of the people to vote. All other examination dates remain unchanged,” read the statement.