By Shikin Louis
KUCHING, June 25: Two more Sarawakians are suspected of falling victim to foreign job scams with their last known whereabouts in Myanmar.
The first case involves a 37-year-old woman identified as ‘Hou’ who flew to Bangkok, Thailand on May 14, 2024 after she was promised a job as an administrative officer with a high salary.
Based on information from her father who was met by reporters at Bangunan Sultan Iskandar here today, Hou only worked for a day before she was notified that she would be transferred to Myanmar the next day.
Sensing that something was not right, Hou intended to quit but she was told by her ‘captor’ that she needed to pay RM20,000 to compensate the overall costs of her return trip to Malaysia.
To date, Hou’s father has not receive any information on his daughter for over a month. A police report was lodged at Sekama Police Station afterwards.
Meanwhile, the second case involved a 23-year-old man identified as “Kueh” who flew to Thailand last Saturday (June 22) for a job as a lorry driver.
According to Kueh’s girlfriend ‘Chen’ who was also present at Bangunan Sultan Iskandar here, Kueh was suspicious of the new job as he was taken on a vehicle ride which lasted for a few hours.
Upon arrival, he sent his final location to Chen, indicating that he was in Myawaddy, Myanmar.
From then onwards, Chen lost contact with Kueh and filed a police report at Batu Kawa Padawan Police Station at MJC, Batu Kawah, on Sunday (June 23).
Concerned over their safety, Hou and Kueh’s loved ones approached George Lam, a special assistant to Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen, for assistance.
According to Lam, the two cases clearly show that the scammers are using jobs to attract Malaysians to work in Thailand before trafficking them to Myanmar.
This was evident in Kueh’s case where he was lured by a Facebook account named ‘Fish Ball’—suspected to be used by the scammers—which has been posting job vacancies on Facebook pages.
“Malaysians need to be extra alert when you see this kind of proper jobs promising high pay.
“From what we understand, the promise of salary payment was RM7,000 per trip. So, if the victim has done a trip, then he will get a pay of RM7,000,” he told reporters.
Lam said he would assist both cases by lodging additional reports at a police station today to further aid the investigation into the matter.
On Nov 9, 2023, the then Sarawak police commissioner Datuk Mohd Azman Ahmad Sapri disclosed that there have been 52 reports made with regards to Sarawakians being lured by high-paying jobs in casinos and hotels, only to find themselves stranded in situations far from what was promised.
Out of the 81 Sarawakians stranded in Myanmar, 30 were successfully brought back at that time.
In a separate report on March 20, 2024, the Foreign Ministry’s Sarawak Regional Officer Director, Fenny Nuli, revealed that Sarawakians top the chart in Malaysia as victims of foreign job scams with up to 1,000 possibly marooned in Myanmar. — DayakDaily
