There is a mechanism in place in India to deal with complaints of fake agencies that are luring people in the name of facilitating study or job opportunities abroad and charging exorbitantly high fees from students or job applicants.
In a written reply to a parliament member’s question, the Minister of State for External Affairs, V Muraleedharan said, “The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has a robust grievance redressal mechanism, including MADAD (MEA in Aid of Diaspora in Distress) and e-migrate portals for online registration of grievances of students or emigrants who have been subjected to cheating.”
To a question raised by Dr Subhas Sarkar, the State Minister of External Affairs, admitted about the complaints being received from Indian students or emigrants, their relatives, who are sent for study or overseas employment fraudulently “by illegal agents/fake agencies and are thereafter subjected to charging exorbitantly high fees from students.” They are denied jobs and left to live in poor working conditions.
Elaborating the mechanism to deal with such complaints, the Minister said: “On receipt of details of such illegal agents, the complaints are forwarded to the concerned State/UT Government and Police authorities urging them to apprehend illegal agents and prosecute them.”
On receiving a request from the state government or police authorities concerned, prosecution sanctions are issued expeditiously by the MEA, enabling them to initiate legal action against the illegal agents.
“Wherever required, such complaints are also referred to mission/posts abroad for providing relief/rescue,” the minister said.
The MEA also called upon the emigrants to “utilise the services of the registered recruitment agents and not to go through illegal/fake agents.”
Available data suggests action taken against unregistered agents between 2016 and 2020.
SOURCE: MEA
The ministry encouraged people to use available tools like MADAD to register their complaints.