Visakhapatnam: Despite a spurt in the number of job fraud cases in Vizag, Vijayawada and a few other big cities in the state with the mushrooming fly-by-night consultancies, the cops are yet to make any progress in setting up a cell to prevent such frauds, to enumerate the agencies handling overseas recruitments and examine their track records. The cyber crime police say that the fraudsters are now coming up with innovative methods to dupe the unemployed youth in the guise of overseas jobs.
In the past few years, over 1,500 unemployed youth, including B.Tech, B.Sc, M.Sc graduates and polytechnic diploma holders were cheated by the recruitment agencies across the state and most of the victims were Vizagites. However, there is not a single cell to protect the gullible persons from the hands of fraudsters in Vizag, Vijayawada and a a few others, where most of the engineering colleges are located, in the state.
The police have turned a blind eye on the job consultancies in the state in spite of hundreds of duping incidents. The cops said the job aspirants have to check the reliability of overseas employers by checking the previous history of the firm through various sources. The police is yet to set up job fraud prevention cells, said a duped youth P.S. Anil Kumar. A majority of the job frauds in state came to light only when the firms downed their shutters after duping youth to the tune of lakhs and crores of rupees and most of the accused are still at large.
Recovery of the money from fraudsters is a major challenge for the cops. Sources said the former DGP of Andhra Pradesh J.V. Ramudu stressed the need to set up job fraud prevention cells in major cities to monitor the operations of number of job consultancies. A senior police officer, on condition of anonymity, said: “With the existing strength of staff, it is very difficult to set up such cells.”
In 2016, the cyber crime police said so far 16 cases online job frauds were reported in the state. However, the fraudsters have been updating on popular websites that they have been offering jobs in various companies and countries.
