SOURCE: The Straits Times

An Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officer was sentenced to four months' jail on Friday for forging medical certificates.

Mohammad Saqib Mohd Ghalib, 34, a staff sergeant, had admitted to five charges of fraudulently making the MCs issued by Kao & Tan Family Medical Centre & Surgery by cancelling the period of his MCs and altering the dates without lawful authority.

He committed the offences at Telok Blangah Post Office between December 2010 and March last year.

A district court heard that Sadiq, attached to the Woodlands checkpoint for the last seven years, would tell the doctors at the clinic that they would need to stamp and sign on the MC three times so that his office would believe that it was genuine.

Subsequently, when he needed to cover his absence from work, he would proceed to post office near his home to make the necessary changes.

The extra stamps and signatures on the MC would them make it appear that the doctors had amended the MC and endorsed the amendments by stamping and counter-signing against them.

He was found out after his supervisor had gone through his MCs after he had exceeded his annual medical leave entitlement by 42 days.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Nicholas Ngoh said Saqib had forged no less than 15 MCs and had practised deception on the doctors who issued him the MCs.

Records from ICA showed that he had not turned up for work for four months through an assortment of vacation leave, MCs issued by private clinics, government clinics as well as forged certificates.

Ten other charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.

He could have been jailed for up to four years and/or fined on each charge.

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