MANILA – A party-list representative blamed unscrupulous recruiters for some overseas workers’ use of fake documents.
“Crooked” recruitment agencies are responsible for this fraud, Aniceo Bertiz III said as ACTS-OFW party-list warned Filipino nurses bound for Saudi Arabia against submitting fake documents.
The party-list group said it had responded to 100 requests for assistance from Filipino nurses in Saudi Arabia arrested and jailed for using forged documents.
Bertiz said the nurses were caught after they had spent months on their jobs in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
“We’ve also had cases of nurses with tampered papers who were either acquitted or deported after paying a stiff fine,” he said.
Bertiz blamed “dishonest” recruitment agencies for this.
“If the nurse lacks, for instance, the required duration of occupational experience, the dishonest recruiters themselves will produce the spurious papers just so they can deploy (the nurse) and make money out of the job placement,” he said.
“Sasabihin nila sa nurse, ‘Kami na ang bahala diyan,’ o kaya ‘Gagawan na lang namin ng paraan iyan,’” he added.
Bertiz filed House Resolution 1118 urging the appropriate committee to investigate the Filipino job applicants’ use of forged credentials to comply with requirements of foreign employers.
He cited two cases reported to ACTS-OFW – the jailed nurses claimed their recruiters instructed them to submit the fake documents and even facilitated the acquisition of those papers.
“Recruiters are supposed to validate the papers of job applicants, not facilitate fraud,” read part of the resolution./PN
