Deceived foreign job seekers claim Rs. 102.62 m
Jan 27,2007 00:00
by
Biz correspondent
Foreign job seekers deceived by fraudulent foreign employment agents and companies have claimed a sum of Rs. 102.62 million as compensation in the first half of the current fiscal year. According to a report of Labor Department, the total amount, Rs 84.18 million was sought from unauthorized individual agents and Rs. 18.44 million from overseas employment agencies.
A report quoted an official at the department as saying that they received a total of 410 complaints from various job aspirants in the first six months of the current fiscal year.
According to him, of the total compensation amount demanded by job aspirants, the government has recovered around 16 percent of the total amount in the review period which is almost 63 percent of the amount duped by foreign employment agencies.
The department has recovered Rs. 16.71 million from fraudsters.
The new bill, being proceeded in the House of Representatives, has proposed to give legal status to individual agents. The department is optimistic that once the new act is implemented, they could legally start working for foreign employment agencies and foreign employment agency that hires individual agents will be fully responsible if the person flees with job aspirant's money.
In most of the cases, individual agents and agencies had either defrauded overseas job seekers of hefty sums or placed workers in situations other than that agreed upon in the work contract.