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Two Jailed for Fake Fitness Certificates

DUBAI — A cleaning worker in the Ministry of Health, who took a bribe of Dh2,500 to facilitate a medical fitness certificate wrongfully declaring the applicant free of any contagious disease, was sentenced to two years on Thursday.

The Court of First Instance also ordered the 30-year-old Indian worker, who works for a company handling cleaning and maintenance works for the Preventive Medicine Department in the MoH, to pay a fine of Dh2,500.

His accomplice, an Indian driver, was also jailed for two years.

Both will be deported after serving their prison terms.

The worker managed to have a medical certificate issued by having someone else than the ‘ill with a contagious disease’ person undergo the medical examination.

He then collected a Dh 2,500 for that service.

What the cleaning worker did not know was that the applicant, whom he helped to get the medical fitness certificate, was a police informant and that he was actually free of infectious diseases.

A police corporal told the prosecutors that the Criminal Investigation Department, Dubai Police received information that a driver who worked for the Preventive Medicine Department in MoH was helping people with contagious diseases in getting medical fitness certificates for a ‘facilitation fee’.

“We arranged to send someone from our side to approach him pretending he wanted a medical fitness certificate. The plan was that our source should claim that he had a transmissible disease,” the corporal said.

The police undercover agent met with the defendant on January 27 near Al Maktoum Hospital and received from him his documents and photos.

“The police officer gave the worker Dh1,500 and the remaining was to be paid upon receiving the certificate,” the corporal said.

On February 1, the CID officers caught the driver while delivering the medical fitness certificate to the police undercover officer in Etisalat parking lot in Baraha.

“He was handed the remaining Dh1,500. He told about how he managed to have the certificates issued with the help of a cleaning worker at the hospital,” the officer added. The driver told the police that he and his accomplice had helped obtain such certificates for many people, some of whom were suffering from diseases such as hepatitis.

mary@khaleejtimes.ae