Verity journal

For anyone that has spent any amount of time in an office environment, the concept of people feigning illnesses to have a short escape from work is a commonly known aspect of the 9 to 5 job.

While taking a breather from a stressful job is not inherently a bad thing, there are people who abuse medical leaves in order to take time off. While doing so, they end up dumping their work at hand onto their colleagues at the very last minutes. As you can guess, this isn’t a good thing for morale, and it is even worse for the bottomline as the loss of a personnel from a day’s worth of work can lead to some financial loses and a huge decrease in productivity, especially if the medical leave was taken suddenly.

In the event that an employee is sick, an employer should strongly encourage the employee to take a sick day after seeing a doctor and getting a medical certificate (MC) as it is an entitlement. However, as seen in the past, plenty of Malaysians have abused this entitlement.

As seen in this 2014 Jobstreet survey, which found that out of 1,058 employers and 749 employees polled in the survey said they would purchase fake MCs if given an opportunity and they are prepared to pay up to RM25 for the fake certificate. That’s one in four people who are running around in the workforce with the belief that “It is just an MC… what’s the big deal?”.

In December of 2017, the New Strait Times how two men, one of which was a student, were arrested for forging fake MCs that have made a profit of around RM10,500 here in 6 months. This report highlights the high profitability of the fake MC business as there is a huge demand for it.

The New Straits Times also later followed up on the news to highlight the severity of the offense and noted that the Health Minister at the time reiterated that employers can take action against employees found guilty of committing the crime, noting that offenders could be subjected to their disciplinary actions from their companies. However, it seems like these threats of disciplinary enforcement isn’t enough to deter offenders.

According to Says, which did an extensive piece on the matter this January, if an employee is found to have forged an MC, there are serious legal repercussions. Employers can conduct inquiries and issue a notice of Domestic Inquiry (DI) before taking disciplinary action such as dismissing the employee.

From the perspective of the law, forging an MC is a punishable crime. In 2016 report by the Malaysian Digest, an officer of Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) was quoted as saying that submitting a medical certificate was the same as submitting a claim, a receipt or an invoice, thus, submitting such forgeries are an offence under Section 18 of the MACC Act.

Evidently, fake MCs are a serious crime that doesn’t seem to invoke much fear from Malaysians. Verity Intelligence also had its own experience with it having caught a staff red handed and was fined RM2000 after having to appear in the court of law. The person was also forced to spend 7 days in jail and now has permanent criminal record.

Because of experiences like this and the understanding of the repercussions, we at Verity Intelligence always encourage employers to do regularly screenings of their employees, to know your employee is to ensure that your company interests are protected, your productivity is maintained and your team morale is managed. Regularly verifying medical certificates as part of your during-employment screening exercise can greatly benefit your business.

Want to prevent the use of fake MCs and minimise the loss of productivity? Stay tuned to the blog at www.verityintel.com to learn more about how employee screenings can help.