Foreign job agents return to old stand against free visa -

Foreign employment agents – who had shut down their agencies protesting a police crackdown on their alleged fraudulent activities – have now diverted their attention to use the opportunity in hand to push for amending the provision for free visa and tickets to migrant workers. A team deputed from the Metropolitan Police Crime Division on February 24 had carried out raids at at least 18 manpower offices and arrested some proprietors. The companies shut down their offices since March 6 in protest, but now their context has changed.The agents now are demanding a correction of the decision taken on July 5 to provide cost-free visas and tickets to the aspiring migrant workers. In this way, the manpower agents have ended up in what seems to be a bargain or price haggling with the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The manpower companies are now insisting that the provision allowing them to charge only Rs 10,000 on a migrant worker will not be ‘profitable’, when the employer companies have shied away from providing promotional expenditure. They are pressing the Ministry to get at least a month’s salary from the workers’ earning through promotional expenditure.