India rescues 130 IT professionals from job racket in South East Asia

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 7

In a massive job racket in which people are being lured with attractive IT jobs in Thailand but kept in harsh conditions in other countries, India has managed to rescue around 50 people from Myanmar and 80 from Cambodia while advising its citizens to be more circumspect because “if a job offer is too good to be true, it is too good to be true.”

“We are trying to get others back too. We do not have the exact number of people captive in Myanmar. We are in touch with many Indians there,” said MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi at a media briefing on Friday.

While 50 from Myanmar have been brought back, many more are in police custody on charges of entering the country illegally. Legal formalities have been initiated to get them repatriated at the earliest.

Around 80 people have been rescued from Cambodia but it is an evolving number, said Bagchi.

“We have issued advisories in this regard. I would like to reiterate to everyone to be extremely careful about what kind of jobs you accept because once you are stuck there it gets very difficult to bring you back safely. This is a word of caution,” he observed. 

In order to get a fix on the exact number of youngsters duped similarly, the MEA has also shared the details of agents allegedly involved in this job racket with relevant authorities in various states in India for appropriate action.

MEA had issued an advisory a fortnight back cautioning IT skilled youth about “instances of fake job rackets offering lucrative jobs to entice Indian youths for the posts of ‘Digital Sales and Marketing Executives’ in Thailand by dubious IT firms.”

These firms, it said, are involved in the call-centre scam and crypto-currency frauds in Bangkok and Myanmar. “The target groups are IT skilled youth who are duped in the name of lucrative data entry jobs in Thailand through social media advertisements as well as by Dubai and India-based agents,” said the MEA.  

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