MANILA, Philippines—A group calling itself Canada Immigration had “friended” him on Facebook and offered him a job overseas.
As it happened, the man they were enticing with job offers and inviting to “like” their page was Hans Cacdac, head of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), who immediately noticed that the recruitment agency did not have POEA accreditation.
Cacdac is now having Canada Immigration investigated for illegal recruitment online.
“They sent me an invite on Facebook. They posted unrelated jobs without the benefit of a recruiter’s license so I told them: ‘Hoy, illegal recruiter!’” Cacdac said in an interview.
“I have already forwarded their name to our anti-illegal recruitment branch. We will look into their Facebook page and see if we can build up a case for violation of laws on recruitment,” he added.
He warned jobseekers about illegal recruiters who were using online networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to victimize unsuspecting job aspirants.
“They thought they could go around the law against illegal recruitment by going online and setting up Facebook pages or tweeting about job offers without going through the right process,” he said.
Cacdac said the POEA recently renewed its memorandum of agreement with the Department of Justice, National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine National Police to go after online illegal recruiters.Philip C. Tubeza