KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal is un­sure whether there is any of­fence which can deal with fal­si­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion on some­one's re­sume.She said, how­ev­er, that giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the act, maybe it was time to look at leg­is­la­tion to make it a pun­ish­able of­fence.See­ta­hal was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on whether or not for­mer Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) deputy chair­man Kurt Ajod­ha could be charged with fal­si­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion on his re­sume.

Ajod­ha's aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions were ques­tioned by Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert dur­ing de­bate in Par­lia­ment last month.Im­bert had said Ajod­ha did not pos­sess the qual­i­fi­ca­tions stat­ed on his CV. Fol­low­ing this, Ajod­ha re­signed from his po­si­tion with AATT."If he had fal­si­fied a cer­tifi­cate, it would have been a fraud of­fence but I don't know that there is any of­fence he can be charged with for putting in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion on his CV," See­ta­hal said.

She said un­der in­dus­tri­al law if he had ap­plied for a job and put false cre­den­tials and it had been found out then he could have been fired.See­ta­hal said con­sid­er­ing the preva­lence, it may be time to look at leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress giv­ing false in­for­ma­tion on a re­sume.At­tor­ney Is­rael Khan was al­so un­sure whether putting false claims on one's re­sume was a crim­i­nal of­fence."A lot of peo­ple put false in­for­ma­tion on their re­sume but no one has been charged with any­thing," Khan said.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Cam­pus Reg­is­trar Richard Saun­ders said the uni­ver­si­ty did not seek to pros­e­cute peo­ple for say­ing that they at­tend­ed the in­sti­tu­tion."If an em­ploy­er calls, we can val­i­date the claim and that is as far as it goes," he added.In Feb­ru­ary, Dr Hafi­zo­ol Ali Mo­hammed, one of the com­mis­sion­ers ap­point­ed to sit on the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the 1990 coup at­tempt, ad­mit­ted his cur­ricu­lum vi­tae con­tained in­ac­cu­ra­cies af­ter a re­port in the T&T Guardian.

In 2011, Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine re­signed af­ter her qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the post of di­rec­tor of the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency came in­to ques­tion.Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer of the AATT Her­tia Fon­cette said the au­thor­i­ty had no com­ment on the is­sue.Asked if the Trans­port Min­istry would be tak­ing ac­tion against Ajod­ha, Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma said no breach had been com­mit­ted.

"He was nev­er an em­ploy­ee. As a re­sult, he can­not be pe­nalised as an em­ploy­ee," Shar­ma said.As an ex­am­ple, Shar­ma said: "If you are a jour­nal­ist and you al­so cook and you put on your re­sume that you are a cook, you can­not be pe­nalised for that."