Interior Ministry to Revamp Civil Service Exams Amid Rigging Scandal

The Interior Ministry has pledged to overhaul recruitment procedures for local civil servants by requiring examination scores to be announced immediately after tests, following a major exam-rigging scandal affecting thousands of candidates. Interior Ministry permanent secretary Unsit Sampuntharat told a House committee scrutinising the 2027 budget bill on Thursday that future recruitment exams would prioritise transparency by eliminating the lengthy delay between examinations and the publication of results. "The Interior Ministry will do everything correctly to restore public confidence," Mr Unsit said. "In the long term, this examination system cannot continue. Once candidates finish the exam, the scores should be printed and announced immediately. There should be no time gap. The results must be printed and released at once." The proposal follows investigations into alleged manipulation of recruitment exam scores for local government positions. Authorities found that while the original scores of about 270,000 candidates were printed within minutes of the examinations, a different set of certified results was later submitted for official endorsement. Investigators believe the delay between the examinations and the official announcement of results created an opportunity for answer sheets or score records to be altered, allowing some candidates to receive inflated marks before the final results were released. Mr Unsit said police had shown him evidence indicating that more than 5,900 candidates had abnormal score discrepancies. He said the original score printouts produced immediately after the examinations could not have been altered, but the certified results later submitted for approval came from a different dataset. The ministry's central committee for local government personnel recruitment is revoking the flawed certification and preparing to endorse the correct results after completing a thorough review, he said. Mr Unsit also acknowledged problems surrounding the appointment of successful candidates. About 12,000 recruits have already been appointed this year, while an earlier third round of appointments was suspended. He said previous committee decisions to appoint candidates first and revoke their appointments later if irregularities were discovered had complicated the situation. Separately, the Central Investigation Bureau said investigators had questioned 11 people -- nine civil servants and two employees of a private company -- who were caught during a raid on a house in Nonthaburi nearly a month ago, allegedly while altering examination scores. The case will be forwarded to the National Anti-Corruption Commission.