MANILA – The Philippine Overseas and Employment Administration has cancelled the license of a job recruitment agency for allegedly deceiving and exacting placement fees from a domestic worker.
Administrator Hans Leo J. Cacdac said the Valentino Promotion Recruitment International Agency, Inc. was stripped of its license for misrepresentation and collection of placement fees from household service workers deployed to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
Cacdac said that in the case of illegal fees exaction, the complainant against Valentino Promotion alleged that a staff member of the agency promised her employment as a household service worker in Singapore with a salary of 600 Singapore dollars. She signed the contract, and was charged an amount equivalent to 8 months of her salary as placement fee, to be paid through salary deduction.
She worked in Singapore for 15 months, but with a salary of no more than US$400 a month.
“With an exchange rate of P43 to a US dollar at the time of her deployment, the worker would have paid P17,200 per month or P138,000 in 8 months, which violates both Philippine and Singaporean laws on recruitment and employment,” Cacdac said.
Household service or domestic workers should not be charged any placement fees. POEA Governing Board Resolution No. 6, Series of 2006 prohibits recruitment agencies from collecting such placement fees. “The mere fact of charging or asking for placement fees warrants the penalty of license cancellation on the part of the recruitment agency,” Cacdac said.
In the case on deception or misrepresentation which the POEA initiated against Valentino Promotion, Cacdac said the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Abu Dhabi, UAE endorsed the case of a domestic worker who took shelter at the OFW Center, 10 days after arriving in the said country.
In her sworn statement, the worker claimed that she signed an employment contract indicating a monthly salary of US$400. Upon arrival in Abu Dhabi, however, her employer disclosed that she would only be receiving 800 dirhams as salary per month. The employer sent her back to Emirates Falcon Manpower Services, Valentino’s counterpart agency in Abu Dhabi, when she refused to accept the job. The agency owner wanted her to reimburse the expenses incurred in her recruitment, and threatened to detain her if she would not pay.
Cacdac said misrepresentation was established when Valentino Promotion submitted for POEA processing the employment contract of the complainant indicating a salary of US$400, only to be reduced to US$200 or 800 dirhams at the jobsite.
“Obviously, the recruitment agency committed such misrepresentation to facilitate the processing of the documents of the worker at the POEA with dispatch. She would not have been allowed to be deployed unless the stipulations in the contract of the worker complied with the provisions of the POEA rules on the deployment of household service workers,” he said, adding, it was Valentino Promotion’s third offense. (Mindanao Examiner)
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