Filipinos who are dreaming of getting a job overseas should be careful of recruiters who are operating even if their licenses have been canceled or suspended by the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency.
"The (POEA) advises the public to be wary of recruitment agencies with canceled or suspended licenses that are still actively recruiting for overseas jobs," contained in an advisory published by the POEA.
The POEA has canceled the licenses of 451 recruitment agencies and placed 44 others under preventive suspension. This includes 74 operating licenses suspended and fined 22 agencies due to recruitment violations.
To verify the status of a certain agency, you may visit http://www.poeacheck.com and check the name of the recruiter or recruitment agency against the latest listings of the POEA. You can also call the POEA Taskforce Against Illegal Recruitment or TFAIR.
Earlier, the Task Force Against Illegal Recruitment (Tfair) named the suspected illegal recruiters with the most number of pending warrants of arrest.
at least 276 Filipinos have a total of more than 20,000 unserved warrants of arrest for large-scale illegal recruitment according to Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa, Tfair operations chief. 68 of the 276 suspects have double digit warrants of arrests.
Based on statistics supplied by the non-government organization Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (Ideals), there were 1,662 confirmed victims of illegal recruitment from January to November 2008, an increase of four percent from 1,539 during the same period in 2007.
Verify the status of your recruiter, recruitment or manpower agency before applying for a job. Visit www.poeacheck.com and make sure you don’t become a victim of illegal recruitment.
