|
|
|
CONTRACTORS - BE CAREFUL OF CARD FORGERIES!
Forgery Concerns
Within the last 12 months there has been a report of a diver forging ADAS certification to gain employment in Asia, a forgery to obtain employment in Sydney and 2 cases of forged HSE certificates in the UK.
In the case of the Asian forgery, the diver presented what was for all intents and purposes a genuine and valid ADAS Certificate of Competency for mixed gas diving. The forgery was only picked up when the divers became suspicious of the diver’s claims to have worked on particular past diving projects, and an email inquiry was made to ADAS. This revealed that the Certificate number of the card purported to belong to the diver was actually registered to another diver. The contractor declined to supply any personal information about the diver to ADAS but sent the diver back to the beach.
The Australian forgery was detected because of an anonymous tip-off. It involved a diver only being required to establish certification by supplying a colour photocopy of his ADAS card to a number of dive contractors over a number of years. In order to develop an effective ADAS Certificate of Competency, the diver merely assembled/produced an appropriate image in Photoshop computer software and photocopied same. At no time over 5 years of active diving and supervising had he been requested to supply his actual plastic ADAS card. The forgery was effective only due to weaknesses in the procedures of the employing contractors in assessing the candidate employee’s certification. It should be noted that a regulator discovering such a forgery during an inspection or a Coroner if the diver was involved in a fatal accident would probably be critical of the effectiveness of due diligence of such procedures.
ADAS would like to strongly encourage all diving contractors to follow a robust recruitment procedure that includes sighting the actual ADAS Certificate of Competency and contacting ADAS for verification if there are any concerns as to the validity of the certification of the card or the diver. This should go long way toward reducing the risk of putting an unqualified diver into the water.
Changes to ADAS Certificates of Competency
In response to concerns regarding forgery of Certificates, ADAS has implemented a new security measure which involves having all ADAS cards issued after August 2007 being imprinted with a holographic watermark into the plastic card background. ADAS cards should therefore (hopefully) be much more difficult to replicate in the future. It should be noted that the new card will be phased-in over the future, so the current un-watermarked cards will be around for some years yet.
- Images of the new card are attached. Click on the link below to see a larger image. It should be noted that the hologram is only on the front of the card and is not as obvious as it appears in the image. Being a holograph, it is imprinted under the image and shows up best when inclined to the light.
CLICK HERE FOR LARGE IMAGE OF NEW ADAS CARD (JPG 1075 K)
|
|
