Fifty per cent of cases‚ which are filed as foreign employment fraud‚ appear to be related to monetary scam

 

More than 50 per cent of fraud cases that are filed at the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) against individual manpower agents are actually related to money dealings.

 

According to the Litigation and Investigation Section at DoFE, everyday around three out of six cases, which were filed as foreign employment fraud, appear to be related to a monetary scam while recording the statement. The amount claimed in compensation of these cases range from Rs 10,000 to more than Rs 10 million.

 

Explaining the reason for this, inspection officer at the Litigation and Investigation Section of DoFE Yadav Prasad Paudel, informed, “People involved in illegal money lending business like ‘dhukuti’ draft a legal document on the pretext of guaranteeing foreign job placement.” He also said that lenders often do this because fraud cases on foreign employment are settled relatively faster and lenders have better chances of recovering their money as compared to the normal court procedures, which can be lengthy and cumbersome.

 

Paudel also pointed out that Section 43 of the Foreign Employment Act, 2064 needs to be amended to ensure that the department only handles genuine cases related to foreign employment. 

 

The provision states that if any person engages in the foreign employment business in contrary to Section 10 or collects an amount with intent to engage a person in foreign employment or sends a person abroad by giving false assurance or lures a person to be engaged in foreign employment, the person will have to return all the money to the victim. The person will also have to extend 50 per cent of the amount collected from the victim in compensation and refund expenses made by the victim to fly to the destination and return from that country. In addition, the person will be fined Rs 300,000 to Rs 500,000 and get a jail sentence of three to seven years. In the event that such a person has not yet been sent abroad, half the punishment shall be imposed.

 

“If the government does not work on resolving this issue at the earliest, all money scam related cases will pile up at DoFE and the cases related to foreign employment could be side lined,” he warned.

 

A high ranking official at DoFE, under condition of anonymity, said, “We have noticed that most cases that claim for compensation of over Rs one million are not related to foreign employment. We have even uncovered some cases in which real estate brokers have drawn a legal document guaranteeing foreign job placement.”

 

In this fiscal year, more than 518 cases have been filed against individual manpower agents. It means around three cases related to foreign employment fraud are filed everyday against individuals at DoFE. Individual manpower agents are those individuals who work as middlemen between a foreign job aspirant and a manpower agency.