MANILA, (PNA) — The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration has warned Filipino workers not to accept offers to work for a freight company in Italy.
POEA Administrator Hans Leo Cacdac issued the warning after receiving reports that a certain Andrew Lorenzo, who claims to be employed by the company, Baggio S.p.a. Transporti Combinati, has been recruiting Filipinos to work in the said company, which is based in Venice, Italy.
However, the alleged recruiter claimed that their employment documents would be processed through direct hiring in Malaysia.
Likewise, the report also identified an agent named Arnie Almazan based in Malaysia charged the applicants P55,000 for placement and visa fee while another agent in the Philippines asked them to pay P6,000, allegedly for POEA processing fee.
With this, Cacdac noted that Lorenzo and Almazan have no authority to recruit from the POEA and therefore were engaging in illegal recruitment activities.
He added that Baggio S.p.a. Transporti Combinati is not accredited with any licensed recruitment agency in the Philippines.
The POEA chief said that recruitment of workers through a third country is an old modus operandi in illegal recruitment.