Grifters seem to be very fond of getting money from migrant workers and then ghosting them in the hopes that they aren’t savvy enough to seek recourse from the authorities or take legal action. For example: Migrant workers in S’pore left in limbo after paying large sums to agency promising jobs in Poland; MOM investigating
Employment agency-related stuff
Checking a company’s status + whether it has an Employment Agency Licence
Check whether they are still live, or if they have been struck off the register: ACRA Bizfile
- Checking the status of a company is free, but information like what their primary & secondary activities are and information regarding company directors will cost SGD5.50 (Sad, perhaps if we had free data like the UK Companies House, that one guy who became a director for 980 companies that had USD5m laundered through them could’ve been outed earlier).
Check whether the company is even licensed as an employment agency: Ministry of Manpower - Employment Agencies Directory
When is a licence needed?
Some companies will choose to report their business activity as “management consulting”, but still perform certain types of work that would require a employment agency licence. It would be too easy to evade licensing requirements if you could avoid them by just reporting your business as doing something else.
Good thing that the Employment Agencies Act 1958 defines “employment agency” as “any agency or registry carried on or represented as being or intended to be carried on (whether for the purpose of gain or reward or not) for or in connection with the employment of persons in any capacity, but does not include any registry set up by an employer for the sole purpose of recruiting persons for employment on the employer’s own behalf”.
Section 2 of the Employment Agencies Act 1958 also defines “specified employment work” where “specified employment agency work” means any of the following work:
(a) communication with any applicant for employment for the purpose of processing any application by the applicant for employment;
(b) collation of the biodata or resume of any applicant for employment for the purpose of helping the applicant establish an employer‑employee relationship;
(c) submission of any application on behalf of any employer or applicant for employment to the Controller of Work Passes appointed under section 3 of the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act 1990, which application is required under that Act;
(d) facilitation of the placement of any applicant for employment with an employer.
Doing specified employment agency work will require a licence for both the employee who’s doing the work, and also for the company itself.