POEA warns recruiters vs exorbitant placement fees

Recruiters charging excessive placement fees, beware!Rosalinda Baldoz, chief of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, said the agency has shut down 15 recruitment agencies collecting exorbitant placement fees on job applicants in the first nine months of the year.

"About 78 per cent of cases pending before the POEA involve collection of excessive placement fees," she said, without giving the actual number of cases brought before the agency.

"We have canceled the licenses of 15 agencies either for charging placement more than the amount allowed by Philippine laws or collecting fees for countries which prohibits such an act," Baldoz said.

Citing the Migrant Workers Act and the POEA rules, Baldoz said recruitment companies are only allowed to collect an equivalent of one month salary of the OFW.

This means that if the worker is given a salary of $500 per month, the agency can only collect or charge this amount one time and should not exceed that amount otherwise they [recruitment companies] would face cancellation of their licenses and permits to operate.

Baldoz noted that there are countries like Ireland, Norway, United Kingdom and the Netherlands that do not collect placement fees because it is shouldered by the employers or principals.

She said it would appear that many job applicants are willing to pay excessive placement fees just to be able to get work abroad due to lack of job opportunities in the country.

It was gathered that in Israel, recruiters charge between P200,000 and P300,000 on applicants as caregivers. South Korea-bound workers are said to be charged P120,000 while those going to Taiwan were forced to pay P80,000 in placement fees. Job placement to Korea has been done on a government-to-government arrangement through the Employment Permit System (EPS), a scheme that eliminates private recruitment. - Marie Neri, GMANews.TV

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