About 50 job seekers who were conned by a fake external recruitment firm in Kampala have stormed Kyanja Police station seeking police intervention to arrest the company director. The victims were scammed by Mugislam business consultant in Kyanja town. According to the group, they were promised non-existent jobs in Middle East countries, where each applicant paid between Shillings 900.000 and 1 million to get a job.
Most of them fall prey to the scam as a result of the job advertisements made both online and on radio stations in Kampala. The company advertised vacancies for security guards, cleaners, cargo handlers, maids, engineers, and nurses among others.
Angella Nalubega, a victim, said that most of them paid in January and February this year, with the assurance to start working within the next three months. She, however, says that the company has been postponing their travel with endless excuses.
“We came to realize that this was a total scam, on Saturday this weekend, during the medical test they had organised at the office, they brought a certain doctor claiming to be attached to Mulago Hospital. We demanded he shows us his identification cards first, which he could not present. They rejected that medical test,” Nalubega said.
Nalubega said others who had paid the company to process passports on their behalf, were also taken to a building in the city center where another person masquerading as an official from the Ministry of Internal Affair interviewed them.
Martin Ntambi from Nakaseke district is another victim. He says that those without National Identity cards were asked to bring letters from their Local Council chairpersons to facilitate the processing of their passports, which opened their eyes.
Other victims said all they needed was Police intervention to arrest the company directors, whom they have never met to refund their money.
Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, Patrick Onyango, said police have arrested Tasha Namuyimbwa, who has been working as the company secretary as the hunt for the director is ongoing. Police have called upon Ugandans seeking jobs abroad to do due diligence on the legitimacy and legality of labor export companies to avoid falling into the traps of human traffickers.
“Ugandans should be doing this with the Ministry of Labour to establish whether these companies advertising jobs are really registered by the government. They can also find out with the Ministry if the company has those job contracts available. Onyango said.”
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