Indian Embassy in UAE busts over 1000 bogus job offers

More than a thousand fake job offers in the UAE have been found by the Indian embassy, as the Asian powerhouse looks to crackdown on widespread fraudulant recruitment practices.

The Indian Workers Resource Centre (IWRC) - under the umbrella of the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi - discovered 1,005 bogus job offers pitched to Indian nationals this year.

At the opening ceremony of the second IWRC office in Sharjah on Sunday, senior Indian officials said the centre in Dubai has been providing the service of spotting counterfeit job offers sent to Indian nationals.

"Of the 1,078 enquiries received till 31 August this year, only 73 job offers were found [to be] genuine," said Dinesh Kumar, the Indian embassy's first secretary of community affairs, according to Gulf News.

Anish Chaudhary, manager of the Dubai office, said the centre receives some ten enquiries every day, which are checked for their authenticity.

"Every day we get emails from people in India saying they have received job offers from the UAE, including even big companies. We try to reply to the queries the same day. We check the website of the UAE government and the websites of the companies offering jobs. We take help from the embassy and consulate also," he said.

"It is not just illiterate or less educated people who are duped. A lot of people - especially university professors - are also getting bogus job offers," he added.

The phenomenon is not restricted to Indian nationals. One British man forked out $80,000 dollars in fees to a bogus recruiter that offered him a fake job in Dubai.