Used By Permission
of The Star - Opinion
Sunday December 30, 2007
Hidden danger in dream jobs
International drug syndicates are targeting
young Malaysian women to be their mules overseas, but their con is becoming
more and more difficult to detect.
FOR many, it was too good to resist. A job
with a ¡°multinational¡± in a ritzy office, cool boss, good money and travel
opportunities ¨C how lucky can a fresh graduate get?
However, as a few young Malaysians recently
discovered, the dream can easily turn into a nightmare. The bright future
instantly dimmed as they find themselves languishing in foreign jails or biding
time until their execution under another country's law.
|
Chew:
¡®Ensure the foreign culprits do not get off scott-free¡¯ |
Umi Azlim Mohamad Lazim, a 24-year-old
graduate of Universiti Malaysia Sabah, could not believe her luck when she saw
the high-paying courier job advertised on the Net early this year. She was
caught at Shantou airport in China with 2,983gms of heroin in her luggage, and
has been sentenced to death.
Neither could Raja Munirah Raja Iskandar,
22, a mass communication student in a private college in Cyberjaya, who travelled
to Japan to be interviewed for a well-paid job last year, as recommended by her
Iranian friend.
Her ¡°helpful¡± friend even bought her a
travelling bag and winter clothes, which he passed to her just before she
departed. This proved to be a costly gift as Raja Munirah was later caught in
the Narita International Airport with drugs in her locked luggage. Charged with
trafficking in 690gm of Syabu, she is now serving a seven-year-and-one-month
jail term in Kosuke Detention Centre, Tokyo.
Previously, most drug traffickers played on
women¡¯s emotions with promises of love to get them to do their dirty jobs. The
¡°casanovas¡± usually lured these women by showering them with expensive gifts
before sending them off on all-expense paid holidays to foreign destinations,
where they were requested to pass a gift to a friend or relative.
These days, many drug syndicates prey on the
MTV generation's need for instant gratification and materialistic aspirations,
with the quick buck and high-flying lifestyle the common carrots.
¡°Unfortunately, many of our young are easily
conned because they are simply too impatient to get rich and attain the high
lifestyle they aspire to,¡± said lawyer Rosal Azimin Ahmad, who was hired by
Raja Munirah's family to help defend her.
According to Tenaganita programme
coordinator Aegile Fernandez, the problem is intensified by
globalisation.
¡°Drug syndicates have become international
with their members easily travelling in and out of Malaysia under the guise of
tourists and students. Our work on trafficking has revealed that our borders
are porous as it is easy for foreigners to enter the country and smuggle in
drugs or weapons,¡± she alleged.
|
Muhammad Shafee: ¡®Many of the young
Malaysian girls caught were naive¡¯ |
The modus operandi of drug syndicates has
also become more insidious, added Rosal Azimin.
¡°It is a rich syndicate, so many can put up
a rich cover like a good office while their members live and dress well. They
can also afford to take time to gain not only their target¡¯s confidence but
also the family and friends. Like in Raja Munirah¡¯s case, the Iranian man who
conned her is close to her family, having been to their house many times.
¡°For work, sometimes it is not even a
courier job, you might be hired for another job, and when you are settled in,
maybe six months down the road, you might be sent on an overseas assignment.
So, you can't really blame the girls who get duped for being stupid or
careless,¡± he said.
MCA Public Services and Complaints
Department head Datuk Michael Chong also believes that many of the young mules
were duped and exploited by international drug syndicates.
¡°Some of these girls responded to job offers
by international companies set up by Middle Easterners and Africans in Kuala
Lumpur that put up job advertisements.
¡°The bosses would bring them for meetings
with the so-called VIPs and even take them to meetings overseas.
¡°So, bringing documents and brief cases are
natural and these girls do not know that the drugs were implanted inside.
¡°The girls were all innocent and they could
pass through the watchful eyes of drug enforcers trained to observe people at
the airport. They did not know that they were carrying drugs until their bags
were screened. We must help them,¡± Chong said.
News reports revealed that in the past 11
months, about 32 Malaysian women in the 20 to 40 age group have been arrested
for their involvement.
Women, Family and Community Development
Ministry parliamentary secretary Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun argued that most of
the time greed landed people into trouble.
She said no one would offer so much of money
for an easy job.
¡°Therefore, Malaysians, especially young
women, must not easily fall into such a trap, and trust strangers in a short
period of time.¡±
Information important
Jobstreet.com vice-president (Marketing),
Simon Si urged young jobseekers to always be careful and cautious when it comes
to jobs that seem very lucrative (abnormally high salary) for very little
effort.
¡°Such ¡°dream¡± jobs rarely exist. The most
important when accepting a job offer is to be absolutely sure about the company
you will be working for and absolutely clear about your role and responsibility
in that position,¡± he said.
He added it is crucial that they take the
effort to do some background checks.
¡°The Internet is a good source to get
information on companies. If the job is posted by a recruitment agency, a check
with the Human Resource Ministry can help to determine if the agency is
properly licensed. If it is a company, its record would be with the Registrar
of Companies,¡± he said, adding that looking for a job through established
recruitment companies such a JobStreet.com is much safer as they will
have a verification measure in place.
He explained, at Jobstreet, jobs that
are posted with insufficient information on type of job and requirements will
be highlighted by the system, hence it will be checked and if the information
provided is not satisfactory the job does not get posted.
¡°If jobseekers are called for an interview,
they should take the effort during the job interview to learn more about each
other for the purpose of filling a position within an organisation,¡± said Si,
adding that if it is suspicious, the job offer should be turned down.
A graphic artist in her mid-thirties who
only wanted to be known as Reena relayed her experience of being offered a
courier job for a foreign NGO in the Middle East in one of the social networks
on the Internet.
¡°At first it seemed harmless enough as the
job is to deliver relief supplies to disaster and war torn areas. Then I got
suspicious about why the organisation had to recruit people through the
Internet, and started asking questions.¡±
She became more suspicious when she was told
that she would not be allowed to open and check the packages.
¡°I kept egging him and his breaking point
came when I asked why they did not use courier service for the deliveries and
he just snapped back that if I was not interested, there are many others who
need the money willing to do the job,¡± she said.
She added, however, that she might have
jumped at the opportunity without a thought if she had been younger and more
naive.
Young girls the target
Prominent lawyer Datuk Muhammad Shafee
Abdullah, who defended the case of Ruzana Zubir who was arrested in Australia
for smuggling 5kg of opium last year, believes that many of the Malaysian girls
who were caught were naive.
¡°Young girls with not much experience
travelling overseas are certainly not aware of the kind of complications that
they can get into right from the time they a board a plane and land at foreign
airports,¡± he said.
Muhammad Shafee said in the case of Ruzana,
it was proven without doubt that she was not aware of the nature of substances
she was carrying.
Ruzana who was arrested on April 1, 2005
after Australian customs officers seized a tar-like block wrapped in tape from
her luggage when she arrived in Sydney. She was later freed and acquitted by an
Australian court of the charge.
Chew urged the police to find the root
cause. ¡°If it is the foreigners, try to arrest them to ensure the culprits do
not get off scott- free.¡±
¡°We at the ministry level will discuss on
what can be done to ensure young women do not get cheated by foreigners, until
they end up in prison,¡± she added.
One area that needed attention is the
dissemination of information on the dangers, said Fernandez.
¡°In the past there were many campaigns and
posters to raise awareness on the dangers of getting duped into drug
trafficking. That has stopped,¡± she said.
Fernandez stressed that a problem was that
the authorities are not doing enough to nab the big players ¨C the
syndicates.
¡°We are nabbing the addicts and the couriers
but more needs to be done to catch the syndicates' big bosses,¡± she said.
Muhammad Shafee agreed, ¡°Many of them were
targeted by foreigners, where the initial contact is made in Malaysia, and I
believe that the police should unravel the people behind the syndicate.¡±
¡¤
Reports by LEE YUK PENG, MANJIT KAUR, ANDREW SAGAYAM and HARIATI
AZIZAN