Rail agency Prasa wants its money back. Bosses at the beleaguered parastatal want former chief engineer Daniel Mtimkhulu to refund all the money paid to him in the four years he held the position .The company is also considering attaching his assets while pursuing criminal charges against him for allegedly falsely claiming to have a doctorate in engineering.Yesterday, senior railways managers demanded that the scope of an investigation into falsified qualifications be extended to the entire company.Prasa group chief strategy officer Sipho Sithole confirmed that the agency would try to recover all the money Mtimkhulu earned and to file fraud charges against him."The charges relate to him fraudulently misrepresenting his qualifications, which [ultimately] means [that] all [remuneration] he received arising from a job he got based on those false qualifications was not due to him. He didn't have the right to enjoy all those benefits," said Sithole.He said Mtimkhulu joined Prasa as an intern in 2000 and worked his way up . He said this was probably one of the reasons for his not being properly vetted.A senior Prasa manager close to the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said more heads would roll as the qualifications of all senior managers would be reviewed."We are sending a clear message to all. [Mtimkhulu] got a job and a high salary . He made Prasa take key decisions based on his position and today he just wants to resign and leave us with a mess."The decision is that we go after him and recover our money. All the monies he got, including bonuses, must be paid back. It cannot be that he gets a senior job illegally and when he is caught he just resigns," he said.The decision to go after Mtimkhulu was taken only a few days after opposition political party COPE laid charges against Mtimkhulu and demanded that he pay back the money he had "earned"."We want that money back," said party spokesman Dennis Bloem. "That is the reason we've opened that case. He presented fraudulent qualifications, meaning he was not qualified to earn that money."DA spokesman on t ransport Manny de Freitas said: "The colossal waste of taxpayers' money to fund under-qualified individuals is a crime against the South African people. The DA will, therefore, be writing to Prasa's board [chairman], Popo Molefe, to request that Mr Mtimkhulu be made to pay back all monies he accrued over four years in his capacity as head of engineering - a job for which he was entirely under-qualified, making his earnings fraudulent."Mtimkhulu resigned yesterday in what is being taken as an attempt to evade a disciplinary hearing, which arose following his failure to produce proof of the qualifications he claimed to have acquired.He claimed to have obtained a doctorate in Germany but, on closer scrutiny, it was found that Mtimkhulu:Possessed only a bachelor of technology qualification and a national diploma;Enrolled for a mechanical engineering course at the Vaal University of Technology but did not complete it; andAttended Technische Universität München but did not obtain a PhD there.Mtimkhulu is not registered with the Engineering Council of SA, as required by law.Before these revelations surfaced, Mtimkhulu was hailed by numerous ANC leaders as a symbol of black progress in post-apartheid South Africa.The Sunday Times reported earlier this month that the day after the dismissal of Prasa chief executive Lucky Montana - months before his tenure would otherwise have ended - Mtimkhulu approached members of the board to give his side of the story.The newspaper reported that Mtimkhulu told board members that he had long ago told senior managers that he did not have a doctorate. The disciplinary inquiry - the future of which is now uncertain - was intended to investigate whether he told his bosses of his lack of claimed qualifications.But this was contradicted byinsiders, who said the agency had tried unsuccessfully to get the truth out of Mtimkhulu.Paul Hoffman, director of the Institute for Accountability, said it would be in Mtimkhulu's interest to pay back all remuneration he had received from Prasa."If he gives back what he stole, this would be a mitigating factor in his sentencing," said Hoffman.Hoffman blamed the increase in the number of people with fake qualifications on the ANC's policy of cadre deployment.This, he said, was against the constitution.He said he did not know if Mtimkhulu's rise in Prasa could be attributed to cadre deployment.David Lewis, executive director of Corruption Watch, said this was the first time he had heard of a senior state official been charged with fraud for falsifying or lying about qualifications.It could set a precedent, Lewis said.He said, however, that the fact that this was a supposed professional allegedly lying about his qualifications made it a lot more serious."You don't want the likes of airline pilots with fraudulent qualifications flying. It's the same with an engineer," he said...