Vithaldas Hegde
vhegde3@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: He was lured with the offer of a call centre job in Thailand, but ended up in Myanmar, forced to work for an organisation that ran international scamming operations by luring unsuspecting clients with investment offers. After spending over a month as part of this illegal racket, the 28-year-old from Tiswadi was repatriated to India after he and other Indian nationals were rescued with the intervention of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). While he refused to be identified, he poured his heart out, speaking about his experience in Myanmar.
An O Heraldo exclusive.
This January, I came across a recruitment ad on Instagram, which was for a call centre job in Thailand. It was a Bengaluru number and the person who spoke to me, interviewed me on Google Meet. He told me that six people had been short-listed, and that my friend from Mumbai and I had been selected.
He later sent me a flight ticket and on January 14, my friend and I flew to Bangkok, from where we were taken to Mae Sot (eastern Thai city close to the Myanmar border) and lodged in a resort. The next morning, another vehicle took us to Myanmar. The vehicle crossed the border with ease, and I noticed the good ties between the border personnel on the two sides and this made me suspicious. But we had no courage to question them, and I don’t speak Burmese.
A couple of kilometres into Myanmar, we were provided accommodation in an area called KK Park, which was about 200 metres away from the premises of the company – Juxiee Group in Myanmar – where we were supposed to work. Next day we went to work as trainees at the call centre.
However, I soon found out that my company was actually a front for scamming people all over the world. I was a trainee, so I wasn’t doing anything myself, but I saw a lot of other employees involved in such work. They would target mostly US nationals between the age of 45 and 80, and start chatting with them, pretending to be women. The final goal was to get them to invest in our company. Within the KK Park area there were hundreds of such companies – all involved in online scams.
Our work timings were from midnight to 2 pm the next day, a shift of 14 hours. We had no weekly offs, but after working for 15 days, we got a half-day off; after a month, a full day off was given. We would get a break from 6 am to 8 am every day and another 30 minute recess at 11.30 am.
While we were not tortured or harassed, the feeling that we were working illegally in another country kept me constantly worried. I would speak to my parents on Whatsapp, but I did not tell them about my anxieties, since they would get worked up back home. However, the living conditions were not bad. They would change our toiletries and bedsheets every two weeks and we lived comfortably.
On February 4, we received a message that we would be rescued by army teams from both the countries. There were over 350 individuals who were rounded up from different countries, including 120 from India. We were first taken to a camp where we were kept for 16 days till we were finally repatriated. There were also 13-14 girls from India. I reached home on Tuesday night, accompanied by a PSI from Delhi airport, who dropped me off to my house.
I was paid a one-month salary of 30,000 Kyat, which is approximately Rs 60,000. I had gone on a two-month tourist visa and a one-year contract. This meant that after two month we would end up overstaying in Myanmar. If we broke the contract, we would have to pay about $3,600 – approximately Rs 3-4 lakh.
In Goa, I was into event management and this was my first job abroad. I now plan to join as a fourth engineer on a passenger ship. My advice to youths aspiring for jobs abroad is that they should thoroughly check the background of the recruiting agencies before signing up. I, too, had done the relevant checks, but hadn’t noticed anything suspicious.