Press Digest - 18 Chinese nationals cheated by bogus recruitment agent return home

THE last of the 18 Chinese nationals who were left stranded at the Senai International Airport after they were cheated by a bogus recruitment agent returned to China on Monday.
Senai assemblyman Wong Shu Qi believed a syndicate is behind illegal Chinese worker scams and the 18 victims were just the tip of the iceberg.
She estimated that the syndicate has brought in no less than 1,000 Chinese nationals to work illegally, Oriental Daily News reported today.
Wong, who was at the airport to send off seven of the Chinese farmers, said she bumped into another batch of 20 disgruntled Chinese nationals waiting for their flights home at the same airport.
She disclosed that unlike the Chinese farmers, who paid the "agent" RMB20,000 to RMB60,000 (RM12,700 to RM38,300) for their trip here only to find the well-paying construction site jobs they were promised did not exist, the Chinese construction workers left in a huff after finding out at a construction site in Johor that the terms and conditions of their employment were not as stated in their recruitment contract.
They have worked for a few days and decided to leave before their visitor's visa expired as they felt they were short-changed, she said.
Wong told the daily she believed a syndicate is actively bringing in Chinese illegal workers.
Their numbers may have exceeded 1,000, far more than 536 as stated at the Johor state assembly in 2015.
Reminding that all Chinese nationals working as labourers in Malaysia are deemed illegals as the Home Ministry does not allow labourers to be imported from China, Wong said she will raise the matter in the next state assembly meeting.