Racket to send underage females to ME:

Measures to nab rogue job agents

The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) is taking steps to nab foreign employment agents and certain sub agents engaged in a large scale racket of sending underage females for employment in the Middle East by obtaining passports with forged documents to show they are older, SLBFE Information Officer Kalanapriya Ramanayake said yesterday.

Following a case of an impersonation sending a domestic aide in the name of Mohamed Lylun Rizana, who had earlier been employed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a suspect employment agent and a sub agent were nabbed by the SLBFE Special Investigation Unit.

They were produced before courts and remanded, he said.

The suspects were produced before the Colombo Magistrate's Court and it has been found that two registered employment agencies have been perpetrating the racket.

The special investigations unit is conducting further investigations to get the details of a number of underage female employment seekers sent abroad on forged documents.

According to the information available with the SLBFE an underage female named Mohamed Arifa was sent abroad for employment in the KSA under the name of another person and legal steps have been taken against the agent and the sub agent.

Six years ago an underage female Rizana Nafeek who was also sent to the KSA also on a passport obtained using forged documents was given the death sentence for the alleged killing of an infant of her employer. Rizana came from a very poor family of the Eastern Province and it was found that the sub agent who had procured forged documents and paid well for his services by an errant agency.

Rizana was only 17 years old when she went to work in KSA and she has been in jail from 2005 after an appeal was made against the death sentence.