By Thai Newsroom Reporters
MORE THAN 3,600 officials at local government administrations have had their employment deals immediately rescinded in the face of allegations that they had been evidently involved in an organised fraud over recruitment exams on which they may have cheated, Interior Undersecretary Arsit Sampantharat confirmed today (July 16).
Among a total of 14,988 people who had passed last year’s exams to be employed as government officials at varied local administrations nationwide, 3,621 have been evidently found cheating, thus having their employments immediately revoked with all their monthly salary and entitlement pays yet to be entirely refunded, according to the interior undersecretary.
That compared to as many as 5,814 local officials who had been earlier suspected of involvement in the exam scam for which one may have paid as much as 700,000 baht in kickback cash to the fraudsters including unnamed government officials responsible for the rigged exams.
Such fraudsters were more or less suspected of being personally, clandestinely associated with certain high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Interior as well as provincial and national-level politicians.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul who concurrently acts as interior minister has instructed the undersecretary and other senior interior officials to launch an in-depth investigation into the despicable exam scam and press criminal and disciplinary charges against those suspected fraudsters and cheaters.
Such frauds over the recruitment of local government officials were believed to have been clandestinely perpetrated for many previous years with payoffs in cash for the organised exam scam combinedly amounting to thousands of millions of baht in a year.
Meanwhile, the prime minister today (July 16) ordered an immediate transfer of Local Administration Department Director-General Thiroot Supawibulpol to an inactive post at the Ministry of Interior and named Deputy Interior Undersecretary Nirat Pongsitthithaworn as acting chief of the department for fear that the transferee might possibly otherwise influence any of his subordinates pertaining to the ongoing probe.
But government critics doubted that any high-level interior officials and prominent politicians in government be evidently found one way or another involved in the exam scam and feared that behind-closed-doors shenanigans might probably be manipulated to cover them up whilst only “small fish” would probably be sacrificed with criminal and disciplinary charges.
CAPTIONS:
Top: Police and officials investigating the exam scam recently.
Front Page: Representative image of exam scam. Both images – PPTVHD36
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