Former Ministry of Health employee given partially suspended sentence

A former Project Technical Officer with the Ministry of Health received a sentence of 17 months for forgery in the Suva Magistrates Court today.

Mohammed Ifraz will spend five months in jail while the remaining 12 months has been suspended for five years.

Ifraz was charged by FICAC in February with one count each of Forgery and Using Forged Document.

He had pleaded guilty to the offences.

Ifraz admitted to using the Paint application on his laptop to make false certificates from the Fiji Institute of Technology and the Fiji National University and attempted to use them to gain employment with the Ministry of Health and Medical Services.

While delivering the Sentence, Magistrate Asanga Bodaragama said that the offences committed were a serious breach of trust by an employee against his employer.

He says Ifraz was a civil servant and no person would be recruited to the civil service if he had no good character.

Magistrate Bodaragama highlighted that the Health Ministry, as a government institute is extremely important to Fiji as a nation, especially during a period of pandemic and that people who work in these state institutions are expected to be honest and hard working.