International Migrants Day: Fake Foreign Job Recruiters Can Finance Three Chandrayaan-3 Missions or Buy Three Rafale Jets Annually

A document placed in the Parliament reveals that the external affairs ministry has identified 2,295 illegal and fake agents by October 30 this year. Andhra Pradesh tops the list with 471 illegal and fake agencies and Uttar Pradesh is in the second position with 400 illegal and fake agencies.

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Sudeesh Kumar, a Keralite who lost his hotel waiter job in Oman during the Covid pandemic, struggled to make a living in his hometown.

He ran a street food outlet, but its failure led him to reconsider emigrating to the Arab Gulf. After several attempts, he found a hotel waiter’s job in a cafeteria in Saudi Arabia in March 2023, secured through a middleman.

The job offered a monthly salary of ₹22,000. Despite the lack of a formal written offer letter and the agent’s reliance on verbal communication for job details, everything except the hefty ₹65,000 recruitment fees sat well with Sudeesh.

“What the agent told me is that the money is needed to process the job visa and purchase the ticket to Saudi Arabia. My wife had a little gold. I pledged it to a private finance company and paid the agent.

“In three weeks, the visa was processed and I flew here. The working conditions are not that fair, but I cannot give up because this job is needed for my family,” Sudeesh told The Leaflet over the phone from Saudi Arabia.

Sudeesh Kumar’s plight is far from unique. Indian job seekers hoping for opportunities abroad often face the predatory practice of exorbitant recruitment fees, even when government regulations exist to curb them.

Maximum ₹30,000

The Indian external affairs ministry clearly states that registered recruitment agencies can charge a maximum of ₹30,000 for their services. Over 1,700 such agencies operate across India, authorised to recruit for overseas jobs.

A crucial factor that comes into play regarding these organisations is their concentration in urban areas. This leaves a gap in rural areas, where desperate job seekers often turn to unregistered middlemen, known as ‘invisible sub-agents’.

These middlemen, operating without oversight, extract unauthorised fees from potential migrants, often without providing any receipts.

For many potential migrants in rural areas such as Sudeesh, the middlemen’s ‘help’ in finding a job feels essential, even though it comes at a hefty price as reaching out to registered urban recruitment agencies is a hassle.

Unfortunately, the exorbitant fee charged by the sub-agents goes unnoticed, despite being a form of corruption.

Advisory notice

Last Thursday, the external affairs ministry came out with an advisory warning for all potential migrants not to fall prey to fake agents offering jobs abroad.

The advisory reads, “It has been noticed that there has been a huge rise in the number of overseas job seekers being cheated by unregistered recruitment agents by fake job offers and also overcharging to the tune of ₹2–5 lakh (US $2,500–6,000).”

The advisory further adds, that these unregistered or illegal agents operate without obtaining licence from the ministry which is mandatory for any recruitment for work abroad.

“It has been reported that many illegal agents operate through Facebook, WhatsApp, text messages and other such mediums. These agencies provide little or no details of their whereabouts and contacts.

“They usually communicate only through WhatsApp, making it difficult to ascertain the location and identity of the caller and the genuineness of the job offer. Such agents also lure workers to work in difficult and life-threatening conditions.

“Such cases are being reported for recruitment to work in several East European countries, some of the Gulf countries, Central Asian countries, Israel, Canada, Myanmar and Lao People’s Democratic Republic,” the advisory adds.

2,925 fake agencies

A document placed in the Parliament reveals that the external affairs ministry had identified 2,295 illegal or fake recruitment agencies by October 30 this year. Andhra Pradesh tops the list with 471 illegal or fake agencies and Uttar Pradesh is in the second position with 400 illegal or fake agencies.

A Parliamentary document placed on the floor in February 2023 says that approximately 1,000 foreign job applications are processed across fourteen ‘Protector of Emigrants’ offices in India daily.

Simple calculations reveal that 1,000 applicants paying US $361 each generate US $361,000 per day for recruitment agencies in India. This translates to US $10 million per month and US $129 million per year.

However, when the external affairs ministry itself says that illegal or fake agencies are charging every potential migrant US $2,500 to US $6,000, the calculations bring out mindboggling figures.

Even if we consider that each of the 2,925 illegal or fake agencies has recruited only five migrants in a month charging US $2,500 each, the amount translates to US $36.5 million in a month.

For a year, the figure will be US $438 million. With this money, the illegal or fake recruiters can fuel five Chandrayaan-3 missions, as one costs only US $75 million, or they can buy three Dassault Rafale jet units, which cost US $115 million apiece, with some change to spare.

Rafeek Ravuther, a migrant rights activist, told The Leaflet that “recruitment is the first process of migration. When illegal or fake agents intervene, corruption occurs when they charge exorbitant fees from the potential migrant.”

“Eventually, this exorbitant recruitment fee pushes the migrant worker into debt bondage back home and forced labour at the workplace. Many migrants have to work one or two years to clear the debt bondage and when the debt exists, the migrant worker will adjust to any exploitative working conditions,” Rafeek added.

The external affairs advisory details that going abroad through any other channel of recruitment involves serious risk of being defrauded of money, not landing the promised job and having difficult living conditions abroad.

“All unregistered agencies are being warned not to be involved in overseas recruitment activities. Such activities are in violation of the Emigration Act, 1983 and amount to human trafficking, which is a punishable criminal offence,” the advisory adds.

Rejimon Kuttapan is an independent journalist and migrants’ rights researcher.