Driver scam: Agency uses RTA name

Driver scam: Agency uses RTA name
Published in Xpress Newspaper, April 2, 2009

Nearly 140 Filipinos – recruited to work as Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) bus drivers in Dubai – have become victims of a possible 20.5-million- peso (Dh2 million) swindle.
Without the promised jobs, some have been reduced to scavenging to eke out their next meal.

Many of the recruits said they came on a visit visa, arranged by CYM International Services, a job agency in Manila, which endorsed them to a local agency, Al Tomooh Technical Services, in Dubai. Al Tomooh declined to comment. In sheer misery

“It’s clear we’re not expected here,” said Reynaldo V. Salas, 35, a former bus driver of Baliuag Transit, wiping away his tears. He showed photocopies of cheques they signed to a bank and lending agency in Manila.



Some victims have already overstayed their visa period.

For each day that a tourist overstays a one-month visa in Dubai/UAE, he/she has to pay a fine of Dh200 (around 2,000 pesos) for the first day and Dh100 for each subsequent day.

The group that had arrived between January 29 and March 6, are currently staying in a flat near the Ajman garbage dump site.

Max Sumulong, 34, one of the victims, said last year CYM had offered him a job as a driver for Dh5,200 a month and he had given the agency 10,000 pesos (Dh1,000) as “processing fee”.

“The agency had asked each one of us to take out a 150,000-peso (Dh11,418) loan from a lending agency recommended by them and made us sign undated cheques worth 405,000 pesos (about Dh40,000) addressed to a bank and the lending agency, payable in 15 months,” he said.

Eliseo Maximo, who has worked for 11 years as a bus driver in Manila, said: “We’ve been collecting aluminium cans, selling them at Dh4 per kg in Ajman, just to have something to eat.”

Uncertain future

Arthur Hernandez, a bus driver for nine years, said: “I don’t know whom to believe anymore … An employee of Al Tomooh said hiring of bus drivers has been frozen. She said there are jobs open for taxi drivers. We’re told to go back to the Philippines. Nothing is clear.”

Virginia Calvez, Philippine Labour Attache and Head of Philippine Overseas Labour Office (Polo) in Dubai, said they were aware of the situation.

Calvez said they had requested the Manila government to stop processing drivers for RTA in 2008 after a similar case of illegal recruitment involving an agency had come to light. Carol Pestaño, a document specialist at CYM in Manila, said she didn’t know why the workers came on a visit visa.

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