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Montenegro is again occupied by the topic of dubious diplomas, which were obtained in Serbia and elsewhere in the region. "Vremen" interlocutors say that regional cooperation is necessary in exposing this octopus
A large number of cases of fake diplomas shakes Montenegro. Prosecutor's offices process dozens of cases, but non-governmental organizations claim that there are tens of thousands of them.
The biggest problem is purchased or forged diplomas in the health system, education and the police.
Zarija Pavićević from the citizens' group Alternative for Vreme claims that out of a total of 80.000 employees in the public sector, at least a third of them have fake diplomas.
"Most of those diplomas come from our surroundings, we mean Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as a small number of them from Albania." "Many diplomas from the health system come to us from Tutin, Prijepolje, Belgrade," he says.
"Diplomas in education are mostly from Bosnia and Herzegovina, specifically Travnik, Brčko, Banjaluka, but also Blace." "A large number of diplomas come from the Union Nikola Tesla University and they are in the stages of investigation," says Pavićević.
As the interlocutor of "Vremena" emphasized, Montenegro has a systemic problem, and even people who certify diplomas are holders of dubious diplomas, from dubious addresses.
A bigger problem with a purchased than a fake diploma
The Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation said that it is much more difficult to detect purchased diplomas than forged ones. As announced, changes are being made to the Law on Nostrification of Foreign Diplomas, and the control will be stricter because the results of learning the subject will be compared with those prescribed by the Montenegrin legislation.
"The most difficult to prove are those 'empty' diplomas, where some students attended classes regularly, appeared for an exam that they did not take and in the end received a diploma of higher education, with maybe a few passed exams, but all his deadlines and attendance at classes and exams match , and such things may have happened in the Montenegrin education system," Snežana Kaluđerović, senior legal adviser from the Center for Civic Education (CGO), explains to "Vreme".
System appendix
The law on the recognition of foreign diplomas clearly indicates that a diploma, once certified, is not subject to further verification, so it is expected that a draft of the new law will be submitted soon, which will finally begin to remove the "appendage of the system".
"The biggest problem of those people who brought dubious diplomas lies in the fact that when border crossings are checked, we often come across data that during their studies they crossed the border of our country only a few times, while in parallel with that the payslips from the institutions they come from clearly pay full-time in the months of graduation, master's, doctorate," says Pavićević.
"This is a serious problem for such a small country because all these people have been deliberately destroying our system for decades, stealing money from all of us and leaving long-term consequences for the health of the citizens, as well as for our education, which is one of the worst on the planet," says Pavićević. .
As he says, he believes that the new Government of Montenegro will listen, and that with joint efforts they will come to an end with an unequal opponent in this Sisyphean task.
Committees for "combing" dubious diplomas
The Ministry of Education confirmed for the Montenegrin "Vijesti" that the criteria for the recognition of educational documents obtained abroad are being tightened.
In practice, this would mean that a special commission checks diplomas that are found to be of dubious quality or drastically different standards compared to Montenegrin educational documents.
One of the reasons for setting up strict control mechanisms is the fact that in the previous two years, the recognition of almost a hundred secondary and higher education diplomas was refused.
Presumption of innocence as an excuse
In the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Montenegro (MUP), the only department that currently has a commission formed on this occasion, they say that they now have 60 applications, but none of the procedures are even close to completion.
According to the data of the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica, this year 27 criminal reports for false diplomas from various fields were processed. The Prosecutor's Office in Pljevlja has about fifty similar cases.
The proceedings take a very long time, critics say.
According to the estimates of the citizens' group Alternativa, there are over 30.000 fake diplomas in Montenegro. According to our interlocutor, at this moment about 5.400 of them are waiting for nostrification.
Unveiling the octopus
Fake diplomas are now not only a problem faced by the Montenegrin labor market, but a regional problem.
"Urgent interregional cooperation and the establishment of an interregional body that will deal with checking and controlling illegal diplomas is necessary," says Snežana Kaluđerović.
If the region does not urgently start cooperating in exposing this octopus, says Kaluđerović, all states will have to invest much more in the police instead of education, which is the strongest state resource on which the state rests.
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