Woman arrested for alleged illegal recruitment

A SUSPECTED illegal recruiter was arrested for accepting money a jobseeker paid for an allegedly non-existent job in Dubai and Malaysia.

Elizabeth Chua, who was arrested in an entrapment yesterday, was also accused of allegedly accepting money from nine more women she reportedly assured she could place overseas, either in Dubai or Malaysia.

Jobs

“Subject promised to deploy me for employment within two months,” Daisy Mae Avila, one of the complainants, said.

Chua, who denied the allegations, claimed the complaint the jobseekers lodged at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 has been settled, while she promised the complainants’ job, she had the authority to do.

“Our company can direct-hire,” she claimed, adding that she runs a Cebu City-based consultancy firm, the General 18 Co., which represents the interests of a Dubai-based company.

She said the deployment was delayed because the Dubai-based firm she did not identify “suffered losses.”

A person accused of illegally recruiting more than three persons may be charged with illegal recruitment in large scale, a non-bailable offense.

Defraud

The complainants, who said they were defrauded by as much as P25,000 each, said others will be coming out and filing their own complaints and gave the names of Adela Campaner, Rose Marie Figuracion, Jenny Jimenez and Reguila Bathan as among Chua’s other victims.  

Complainant Avila together with April Catalya, Renalyn Perez, Pinky Ycong, Flordeluna Deleches, Misucel Cabatuan, Ma. Mirasol Carron, Jaqueline Miano, Judith Generale, Edna dela Cruz sought the NBI assistance last Feb. 11.

Secretary

An entrapment operation was then mapped out, which was finally carried out yesterday, after the NBI got a certificate from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showing that Chua is not among the country’s licensed recruiters.

She, however, used to be a secretary of an employment agency.

Executives of two licensed recruitment agencies also issued affidavits saying that Chua wasn’t connected with them.

Not authorized

The complainants had told the NBI that Chua represented herself as being with the Speed Continental Employment Agency and the SHFIA International Manpower Services.

“(Speed) did not hire the services to recruit for and in behalf of our company nor authorized Ms. Elizabeth Catubig Chua… as the marketing consultant or representative of said company,” an affidavit issued by the agency’s manager, Nanette Fernandez, read.

Analyn Buladaco, branch officer-in-charge of SHFIA, issued a similar affidavit.

Consultancy

Chua admitted she does not have a POEA license but said this is because she wasn’t recruiting, but was instead doing “consultancy work.”

She said she never claimed to be with Speed and SHFIA, adding that her company merely contracts its hiring through the two firms.