KATHMANDU: Advertisements promising lucrative job opportunities are plastered across city walls and flooding social media platforms in Nepal. These eye-catching posters claim to offer employment for 50 to 200 people, offering salaries of up to Rs 50,000 while working from home.
Flyers carrying messages like ‘urgent staff needed’ and ‘guaranteed job without interview’ are being distributed in major thoroughfares like New New Baneshwar, Koteshwar, Kalimati, Gongabu, Ratnapark and Chabahil. These offers seem too good to pass for unemployed youths. Desperate for jobs, unemployed youths pay registration fees and fill out forms at these ‘job centers’ hoping to land themselves a job. However, their dreams of employment soon turn into nightmares as these supposed recruiters gradually go out of contact. Only then do they realize that they have been scammed.
Rajkumar Pandey from Dhading is one such victim. A BBS degree holder from Nepal Commerce Campus, Pandey applied to Thapathali-based ‘Hamro Job’ in March after seeing an advertisement on social media. Despite paying an application fee of Rs 1,000 and attending three interviews, Pandey is still jobless. “Now the job center does not answer my calls. When I visit, they just say they will contact me when a suitable job comes up,” Pandey said.
Pandey, however, has not filed a complaint with police. “It felt odd to file a complaint as I was swindled out for a paltry Rs 1,500,” he added.
Bikram Raj Rijal from Syangja, who has compiled a BA from Tri-Chandra College, has a similar story to share. Despite applying to multiple ‘job centers’, he is still unemployed. “They claim your job is guaranteed once you register. They call you back for interviews and charge additional fees,” said Rijal. A Facebook page named ‘Rita Gurung’ is swindling many youths by publishing attractive employment notices, he added.
Gita Basnet from Ilam, a third-year BA student at Padma Kanya Campus, also fell for online job advertisements promising work-from-home opportunities. The job center demanded that she pay Rs 5,000 for a two-week training program. “These job centers advertise one thing but run entirely different schemes,” Basnet said. “They asked me to work at massage centers and beauty parlors.”
She has spent over Rs 2,000 on application fees at as many as four job centers.
Rita Gurung, who runs Chino Job Center in Sitapaila, told Himal Press that she works with various companies and supplies the workforce that they need. She admitted to charging service fees based on the job, including application fees, interview charges, and a percentage of salary for three months.
While Gurung has been collecting fees from applicants, her firm is not registered with the government. She has been operating her business entirely online.
Officials of the Department of Labour and Occupational Safety said there is difficulty in taking legal action against these scams due to lack of evidence. Maninath Gop, the department’s spokesperson, said only 431 out of over 3,000 job centers across the country are duly registered with the government. “We advise job seekers to verify the authenticity of job centers before applying,” he added.
Employment expert Jivan Baniya accuses the government of neglecting the issue, allowing scammers to thrive. “Youth are being scammed daily in hopes of finding employment. This is a crime,” Baniya said. “Victims often do not file complaints due to the small amounts involved. This is emboldening scammers further.”
As per the Labor Act, such scammers can be sentenced to a maximum of three months and fined Rs 5,000.
However, victims rarely come forward to file complaints as they feel the scammed amount is too small to pursue a legal case, said Binod Ghimire, the spokesperson for the Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation Division. “We do get some complaints at our call center. We have been conducting raids at these job centers based on the complaints,” he added.
