The Protector of Emigrants (PoE) has issued an advisory to media houses against publishing employment advertisements for foreign jobs without verifying the credentials of the recruitment agencies. The advisory assumes importance in the light of foreign recruitment rackets that rocked the State recently.
Bindu N. Nair, Protector of Emigrants, Thiruvananthapuram, said in a statement here that most of the advertisements in the media on foreign recruitment did not follow the existing instructions of the Ministry of External Affairs (MoEA).
Media houses have been asked to publish overseas employment advertisements only of those agencies which hold valid licences from the MoEA since only authorised agencies are allowed to undertake such recruitment.
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The advisory includes a request to media houses to seek a copy of the licence before accepting the advertisement material in order to ensure that there is no misuse of licence numbers by sub-agencies and unauthorised agents.
The advertisement should also mention the complete name, registration/trade licence number, the country of the foreign employer, name and address and contact details of the recruiting agent with their licence number, mode of selection, recruitment fee to be charged per candidate through draft, cheque or online transfer, date and venue of interview, job description, eligibility criteria, salary being offered, and number of vacancies against each job categories, the statement said. It said that the names and licence numbers of registered agents can be verified on http://emigrate.gov.in .
In the case of nursing recruitment, apart from verifying the names and licence numbers of the agencies, it is mandatory to seek the authorisation letter issued by the MoEA to carry out such recruitment from time to time on a case to case basis for specific nursing recruitment.
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“We have noticed that most of the time, the permission of the Ministry to a particular recruitment agency for a specified hospital is being misused for recruitment to that country in general,” the official said, citing a recent advertisement for recruitment of nurses to Jordan that did not carry the name of the hospital and was misleading.