Police in the Western Region have arrested four persons allegedly involved in a recruitment scam in Takoradi.
The Police made the arrest upon a tip-off from a radio presenter on Friday December 11, 2015.
The Police has also initiated processes to return some GH6,000 which was extorted from the over 200 job seekers.
At around 11:00am on Friday, a group of young men and women numbering about 200, thronged the premises of Skyy Power Fm in Takoradi after a purported non-governmental Organization, Education Against Poverty Foundation, advertised existing job opportunities on various local radio stations
Following the radio advertisement, each of the unsuspecting job seekers who turned up at the premises of Skyypower FM, paid a sum of Ghc30 as registration.
The supposed NGO had succeeded in registering majority of them before the police intervention. According to reports, although the name of the NGO that promised the unreal jobs was given as Organization Against Poverty Foundation, the name on the registration forms for the unsuspecting job seekers, is Mount Moriah Senior High School, also at Elubo in the Western Region.
A presenter at an unnamed radio station who noticed the disparity in the information on the forms, immediately alerted the Police.
Citi News’ checks at Elubo also revealed that Mount Moriah Senior High School had collapsed some 7 months ago, due to the school’s inability to meet its financial obligations.
The unsuspecting job seekers who were undergoing the registration process, became alarmed when the police stormed the venue.
It was at this point that the job seekers realized that they had been swindled.
One of the job seekers narrating his ordeal to Citi News said that “we were told to come along with GHc30 for registration forms. We paid and they told us to sit here for job description. They told some of us that there are some people living in a house somewhere who do not have money to go to school, and that we were going to act as parents to those kids. As part of our job, the NGO will send those kids to school and then we will be taking care of the kids so that when the kids need school fees, we will write letters to the NGO to request for those monies for payments. That wasn’t the kind of job I was expecting, but they could not finish with the explanation when the police came in stop the process.”
Another victim said “right from the registration, I asked whether they are from a reliable source but they didn’t answer me appropriately. Besides, they also did not give us receipts to the over 200 persons who were registered.”
There have been similar reports of such recruitment scams mostly in the national security in recent times.
Ghana’s youth unemployment keeps soaring, a situation that appears to be making people more gullible to such scams.
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By: Obrempong Yaw Ampofo/citifmonline.com/Ghana