By Vir B. LumicaoTwelve Filipino domestic workers have complained to the Hong Kong police against the owner of a recruitment agency in Central who had allegedly charged them huge sums of money as agency fee for inexistent jobs in Canada.
A further eight job applicants who were also allegedly duped by the agency, Excellent Nannies, owned by a certain Grace Ngan, were also drafting a complaint that they would submit to the Labour Department’s Employment Agency Administration.
Eight members of the first group went to the Wanchai District Police Headquarters on June 3 to file their complaint. The women claimed that Excellent Nannies collected between $10,000 and $45,000 from each of them after asking them to sign purported job contracts with the alleged employers in Canada.
The applicants were promised jobs as either nannies or caregivers to the elderly in the cities of Ottawa and Toronto in Ontario at weekly salaries ranging from CA$385 for nannies to CA$440 for caregiver to the elderly.
They said the payments were made in Excellent’s shared offices with a travel agency in Room 501 on the fifth floor of Sunny House, Li Yuen St West, Central.
Ngan, a Filipina married to a local Chinese resident, reportedly recruited the Filipinas on different dates between March 2013 and July 2015, through flyers she handed out herself and newspaper advertisements claiming she was processing “direct hires”.
One applicant, a native of Tarlac, said she paid $45,000 for a job as elderly caregiver.
She said in an interview after filing her statement at the police station that she borrowed the money from her sister who was already working in Canada.
Another applicant considered herself lucky because she paid only $10,000. She applied for the job of nanny in March 2014.
The complainants said they were convinced they could work in Canada because Ngan had even set up Skype interviews between them and their supposed employers. But they started getting alarmed when they were unable to leave for the promised jobs after waiting for more than a year.
When they started badgering Ngan, she reportedly gave them various excuses and then made herself scarce, mostly communicating with them only via text messaging.
The last time the group heard from her was on May 15, when she reportedly told one of the applicants in a text message: “I will keep you updated.”
On the same day, Ngan was reportedly seen going to her office to collect some documents and a suitcase.
Police tried to call the telephone numbers that Ngan had put on her fliers but the landline was dead, while she was not picking up her cell phone.
Some of the applicants who also complained to the Mission for Migrant Workers will try to get relief from the Small Claims Tribunal, said case officer Esther Bangcawayan.
