Fake job agents use pandemic to dupe Indian workers looking for UAE jobs
HERE IS WHAT INDIAN JOBSEEKERS NEED TO KNOW TO AVOID FALLING PREY
Indian missions in the UAE have urged jobseekers to report fake agents who are back in action post peak months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The call from the missions follows a top Indian official’s warning against recruitment agents putting Indians at risk abroad.
Sanjay Bhattacharyya, secretary to the government of India in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), this week raised concerns about “unscrupulous agents exploiting Indian citizens and putting them at risk abroad.”
In a tweet posted on his personal Twitter account, the secretary called upon Recruiting Agents (RAs) to act responsibly or else they will be held accountable.
Retweeting his post, the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi stated that the mission and the Indian Consulate in Dubai had acted upon complaints against such agents and brought them to justice. “We encourage everyone to report all such agents. Your proactiveness can change someone’s life,” the mission added.
When contacted, Sandeep Kaushik, second secretary, Press, Information and Culture at the embassy, said there has been a surge in the activities of devious recruitment agents post the Covid-19 lockdown.
“There were such cases earlier as well. But they had come down during the peak of the pandemic. Now cases have started coming up again,” he told Gulf News.
Proper channels
Consul General of India Dr Aman Puri also confirmed that there had been cases of cheating by the agents that had been brought to the notice of the mission of late.
“In the post-Covid world, some sections of the society have become more vulnerable,” he pointed out.
“It is always wise to leave the [home] country as a skilled worker with proper documentation and through proper channels,” he added.
The UAE has a robust system of employment that helps fight recruitment scams.
Officials have time to time issued warnings against people flying into the UAE on visit or tourist visas for job hunting. The UAE government departments have online systems through which jobseekers can make preliminary verification of the authenticity of the employment offers and entry permits. The Wage Protection System [WPS] ensures that employees are paid via bank accounts as per the salaries mentioned in their contracts.
However, most often fake recruitments happen with people who still arrive on tourist or visit visas to look for jobs or to take up jobs offered to them back in India, with the promise that they would be given employment visa on arrival.
12 Indian women duped
It was just last month that the consulate reiterated its warning against jobseekers flying into the UAE on visit visas after authorities and social workers worked together to rescue 12 Indian women who were duped by recruitment agents.
Aged between 21 and 46, they were given false hopes of jobs as housemaids. “They were not given proper jobs and they complained of being ill-treated,” said Roop Sidhu, general secretary of the Indian Association in Ajman, who supported the mission in rescuing the maids. Sidhu had said that Ajman Police had already arrested one agent, while rescuing the first group of seven women who were locked up in an apartment.
Action and awareness
Whenever such cases are reported, the diplomats said, the missions report the matter to the local authorities where it is applicable and the government of India and action has been taken in many cases. Licenses have been revoked and agencies have been penalised in such cases.
Indian community members have been urged to verify job offers and not to fall prey to fake agents. It is also a must for blue-collar workers in India to be recruited only through the ‘eMigrate’ online recruitment portal of the government.
Dr Puri said Indian expats should also play a role individually by assisting people known to them to connect with the missions or the Pravasi Bharatiya Sahayata Kendra (PBSK), a help centre for Indians that also provides the service of verifying job offers in the UAE.
Deepak H. Chhabria, chairman of Mumbai-based Federation of Indian Emigrants’ Management Councils and Associations, however, said the need of the hour is a comprehensive system for awareness and job verification back in India, especially in villages that send blue-collar workers abroad.
Direct verification
“There should be some provision of direct verification of job offers by workers who are not good at using computers or smart technology. There should be some help centres or government-appointed employees who can be posted in villages from where most of the workers go abroad.”
Offer letters can also be verified through the websites of the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and visas can be verified through the websites of the UAE Ministry of Interior or Amer Centres in Dubai.
However, Chhabria said some of the agents registered under the e-Migrate system are also to be blamed for duping workers in some cases.
“There is a new category of agents who can register with a bank guarantee of just Rs800,000 to recruit 100 workers whereas big recruitment companies have to pay Rs5 million as bank guarantee. Some of these new agencies are into hanky-panky businesses and creating complications. There should be stricter monitoring of these agencies and proper verification of the foreign employers associated with them,” he said.
In some cases, he said that there have been cases in which some unscrupulous agents had changed the names of foreign employers in the UAE after copying visas in PDF formats and deleting their original details.
“When they gain entry, they realise that they don’t have the offered job.”
It is always wise to leave the [home] country as a skilled worker with proper documentation and through proper channels.”
Ways of duping jobseekers
Indian jobseekers, especially less educated blue-collar workers and debt-laden executives, continue to be coerced into paying huge amounts of money to recruitment agents who lure them with lucrative job offers.
According to Chhabria agents take a minimum of Rs50,000. The charges go up in many cases and many workers have had to loan that money to make payments to agents, expecting to get the promised jobs.
Dr Aman Puri | Consul General of India