Fake companies

For too long, Assam has been the happy hunting ground of chit funds, devising all sorts of stratagems to dupe small investors of their hard earned money. But even the busting of Saradha, Unipay2U, Rising East, PURA and several other such shady operators, lessons have not been learned by concerned authorities in this State. Rather the suspicions keep growing that sections of law enforcement and economic offences investigation apparatus have been compromised to look the other way. It turns out that some fake companies are adopting the modus operandi of collecting thousands of rupees from youths in the State desperately looking for jobs. They are herded into dormitories taken on rent, given a ‘training’ and then told to hawk products door to door. They are given a pittance as salary, that too irregularly, with the promise of regularizing their employment. Collecting crores of rupees in this way, these companies disappear overnight, leaving their trainee employees high and dry. Recently Sivasagar police arrested two officials supposedly recruiting for the Delhi-based company Galloway. They had opened branch offices in several districts under different company mes to hide their tracks. A young girl forced to pay Rs 23,000 by this group attempted suicide in Golaghat, while enraged youths vandalized their office premises there. In a State of bleak employment scerio, such exploitation of jobless youths must be countered strongly, while student and youth bodies need to be vigilant.