MECO wants placement firm blacklisted

MANILA, Philippines — The Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) yesterday sought the blacklisting of a placement agency for allegedly defrauding Taiwan-bound Filipino scholars.

MECO chairman Silvestre Bello asked the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) to sanction JS Contractor for the illegal collection of fees from Filipino students.

Bello said he received reports that JS Contractor collected P45,000 each from 32 students who arrived in Taipei last Nov. 2 under a scholarship program in one of Taiwan’s leading universities.

The amount was supposed to cover airfare, visa, pre-departure orientation seminar and overseas employment certificate, but Bello said the students are not required to secure an OEC and need not undergo the PDOS.

According to Bello, only departing Filipino workers for deployment overseas are required to secure an OEC from the DMW and go through PDOS for a fee.

“Aside from being too excessive, the collection of OEC and PDOS fees is patently illegal,” Bello pointed out.

“This agency must be punished for its nefarious activities. It has to be prevented from further victimizing hapless young people whose families are seeing fresh hopes with their inclusion in the scholarship program,” he added.

The Taiwan Ministry of Education guidelines on the program provide that a university or college cannot accept scholars deployed through recruitment agencies.

The scholarship is a work-study program for Filipino students under Taiwan’s Academe-Industry Collaboration Program of the New Southbound Policy.

There have been 201 recipients of the study-work program since it started in March 2019.