POEA investigates another “lazy recruiter”

News Advisory
27 June 2014

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration is investigating another licensed recruitment agency which was found passing on to a visa consultation company the recruitment of workers it deploys for overseas jobs.

Administrator Hans Leo J. Cacdac said operatives of the POEA’s Anti-Illegal Recruitment Branch , in coordination with PNP-NCR Eastern Police District Station 2, recently closed down the office of a visa consultancy company whose owner readily admitted that she was recruiting for a licensed recruitment agency.

Cacdac identified the visa consultancy office as Pathways Visa Consultancy located at Suite 303, Arnal Center Residences, Caruncho Avenue, Pasig City and its owner, a certain Miraflor Sibayan Castillejos, a native of Cauayan City, Isabela.

Castillejos disclosed that she endorses the employment papers of her applicants to Century High HR Inc., a licensed agency, for processing by the POEA.

Cacdac has a post in his Twitter account directed to recruitment agencies that says, “ If you are too lazy to recruit as a licensed POEA recruiter, please stop recruiting and surrender your license back to the POEA.”
He also cautioned the public against engaging the services of these recruiters.

“Please be gravely warned about some licensed recruiters who do not actually recruit, and merely act as "processors" of people recruited as domestic workers by the actual recruiters who are not licensed,” Cacdac wrote.

Cacdac said Pathways Visa Consultancy committed illegal recruitment defined under Section 6 of Republic Act 8042, specifically by performing activities constituting recruitment and placement without valid license or authority from the Department of Labor and Employment or the POEA.

Officers of the POEA’s Anti-Illegal Recruitment Branch reported that they found employment application forms, and photocopies of passports and visas inside the consultancy office.

Cacdac ordered the inclusion of the names of Miraflor Sibayan Castillejos and Pathways Visa Consultancy in the List of Persons and Establishments with derogatory records, thereby disqualifying them from the government’s overseas employment program.