Darjeeling cops adopt measures for safe migration

HT, 9 Sep 2016, DARJEELING: With the district being highly vulnerable to human trafficking owing to migration to foreign shores, mainly for jobs, the Darjeeling Police on Thursday organised a sensitisation programme to educate manpower agencies on the norms of safe migration. Henceforth, it will be mandatory for all manpower agencies to submit details at the local police station every month of their clients who have been sent to foreign countries for jobs.

“We sensitised representatives of the manpower agencies operating in Darjeeling about the vulnerabilities and liabilities in their line of work. We have informed them about the rules and regulations that they have to adhere to for running manpower agencies, including getting their companies registered with the Protector of Emigrants if they are running a manpower agency supplying manpower to foreign countries,” said Amit P Javalgi, superintendent of police (SP), Darjeeling.

The SP said that the manpower agencies will have to provide the contact numbers of the police officers of the district to their clients. “In case of any problems in foreign shores, the victims can contact us and we will do the needful,” said Javalgi.

The Darjeeling police will also upload a format on people going abroad for jobs in their website www.darjeelingpolice.com. The form has to be downloaded from the website, the details filled up and submitted at the local police station by the manpower agencies. “The details will include name of the person, local address, contact number of a relative or guardian to be contacted in case of any emergency, name of country of occupation, name and address of company that will be employing the person. In case we receive any complaints it will be easy for us to initiate necessary action,” said the SP.

The SP said there are certain preventive measures that persons going abroad for jobs should strictly follow. “Under no condition should a person hand over his or her passport to anyone,” said Javalgi, adding, that there are numerous cases in which the employer confiscates the passport of employees thereby rendering them helpless. “After this the employer starts exploiting the employee,” said the SP.

Darjeeling being a border district makes it highly vulnerable. Recently, the Darjeeling police had unearthed a major high profile passport racket. The matter came to light when some villagers received passports through the local post office without having applied for them.

Dawang Bhutia of Sonada along with John Rai of Permaguri, Sukhiapokhari were arrested along with one Poonam Gurung from Nepal. Bhutia and Rai used to make fake passports issued in the name of unsuspecting villagers of Darjeeling for Nepal residents (the photographs used to be switched). The Nepal residents used to then go under these false identities of the Darjeeling villagers. They used to collect the passports from the local post office.

Once owing to a slip the passports had been delivered to the residence of the villagers who were utterly shocked of having received passports without having applied.

“We recovered 30 to 35 of such passports. We have got in touch with the passport offices for the cancellation of these passports.

Departmental proceedings have also been initiated against two police personnel who had undertaken the verifications in these passport cases. One has been suspended while the other has been closed to the police line. Investigations are still on,” said the SP.

The woman Poonam Gurung of Nepal had paid the duo Rs 1,30,000 and got a passport in the name of Nilam Tamang of Permaguri, Sukhipokhari in 2013. She had even gone to Hong Kong and worked there under the name of Nilam Tamang. However, later during revalidation of visa, during inquiry she was nabbed by the police and then spilled the names of Bhutia and Rai.