Corrupt officials should be punished by the Ministry of Education amid allegations that they leaked examination papers to students during nationwide high-school exams, a representative from the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association said yesterday.

May Sopheaktra, a member of CITA’s central committee, claimed yesterday that exam officials had leaked copies of the paper to students, and said that he had observed irregularities at five exam centres in the capital.

“At [one] centre, a student read the question of the examination out and five minutes later a relative of that student read the answer back to him,” May Sopheaktra said.

“CITA would like to ask the Ministry [of Education, Youth and Sport] to monitor its officials. If the Ministry sees that its officials are corrupt, it must punish them,” he said. “From one year to another [we] have seen that the Ministry has changed nothing. It still has corruption.”

Ou Eng, director general of the general department of education at the Education Ministry, said yesterday that  some students had bought fake exam papers, not the official exam.

“I recognise that students bought examinations, but it is not our examination. The allegation of leaked examinations is not true,” he said.

Ou Eng said that if the Ministry discovered teachers or officials accepting money from students, it would take legal action and ban them from monitoring exams for up to two years. There are 113,795 high school students taking exams, which finished tomorrow, at 243 centres nationwide.