SINGAPORE \u2013 Hoping to get employment passes so they could work in Singapore, two foreign women submitted false university certificates to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).\u00a0<\/p>\n
After they secured the passes, their ruse went undetected for 15 months as they continued working for CL Enterprise, a firm which operates multiple Mr Fix retail outlets carrying items such as kitchenware and appliances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On July 17, Torres Alyssa Riva Fernan and Conol Almira Joy Torres, both 29-year-old Filipinas, were jailed for four and six weeks respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fernan pleaded guilty to one charge under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act. <\/p>\n
Torres admitted to one similar charge, with two other charges taken into consideration for sentencing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asking the judge to impose a strong sentence, MOM prosecuting officer Teo Sijing said others were deprived of the jobs the two women had secured by deceiving the authorities.<\/p>\n
Some time in September 2020, Torres contacted an unidentified Philippine agent known as \u201cCory\u201d to look for a new job after her previous employment at another Singapore firm ended.<\/p>\n
Cory informed Torres about a job as assistant sales manager with a monthly salary of $2,200. Torres was keen and went for the interview.<\/p>\n
After the interview, CL Enterprise submitted an application for an employment pass for Torres to work as its assistant sales manager.<\/p>\n
As part of the application process, Torres submitted a forged certificate indicating she had a bachelor\u2019s degree in science from Ateneo De Manila University, and signed a declaration form affirming it was true.<\/p>\n
She also stated that her monthly salary would be $5,800, although she knew this was false.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She did so on Cory\u2019s instructions as she believed it was necessary for her employment pass application to succeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Fernan heard about Cory through a relative while she was still in the Philippines looking for a job.<\/p>\n
Cory required Fernan to pay her $4,500 before processing her job application. <\/p>\n
Fernan took a loan to pay Cory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fernan then interviewed for the position of assistant operations manager at CL Enterprise and was hired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In her employment pass application, she similarly submitted a forged bachelor\u2019s degree in science certificate from De La Salle University in Manila, and signed a declaration form affirming that she had this qualification.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Both Torres and Fernan worked at the company from November 2020 to February 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their offences were discovered when MOM conducted a random inspection of CL Enterprise. <\/p>\n
Court documents did not give more details about the inspection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MOM\u2019s Mr Teo said educational qualifications and salaries are important considerations when determining whether to grant an employment pass application.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Had the authorities known that the details submitted by the women were untrue, the pair would not have been granted the passes, said the prosecutor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sentence sought would impose a strong deterrent message to offenders who seek to exploit the work pass system by making false statements and creating backdoors to facilitate illegal employment,\u201d said Mr Teo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ministry of ManpowerEmploymentCrime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SINGAPORE \u2013 Hoping to get employment passes so they could work in Singapore, two foreign women submitted false…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-18370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}