Dear Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour,

I am part of a group of individuals that are protesting against the use of the Polygraph in the private sector. For too long have my fellow countrymen struggled the harsh adversity of unemployment due to the unfair practices that run amok in the private sector.

I am referring to the unregulated and unscientific use of the polygraph. Numerous companies in the retail and security sector are currently using this pseudoscientific device for pre-employment screening and for quarterly incentive/commission evaluations.

This has led to tens of thousands of innocent applicants getting rejected because the polygraph examiner believes that they were lying.

This device and its operators are also the enablers of prejudice and discrimination, as there is a stigma that those who "fail" the polygraph are liars and should not be trusted.

It is depressing to see that this device has been allowed to run rampantly throughout our country without regulation. The methods behind this device have been disproven decades ago; when President Ronald Reagan from the US banned the use of the device in the private sector. The very reason for this is the polygraph has been debunked by the scientific community as well as numerous psychologists, and therefore is it has been labelled to be nothing more than a "Stress detector". We as humans are complicated, diverse, and not everyone reacts the same manner when lying. The polygraph has been disproven long ago, but it is still being used as a tool against innocent people. I have seen firsthand the discrimination/prejudice a person endures once they were found deceptive on this junk science device called the polygraph.

What makes the aforementioned even more damning, is the fact that the polygraph examiner can draw out desirable responses from the examinee whenever they want, and provoke them into eliciting a physiological response that can brand them as a "liar"

It is unscientific, unfounded and dangerous. It is also a danger to a person's mental health when they are branded as deceptive despite even a single crumb of evidence is available to support these stigmatised opinions.