By Alhaji Alhasan Abdulai
A news item believed to be coming from Nigeria’s globalnation.inquirer.net on Sunday, May 31 2015 is quite confusing. The story published on Ghanaweb was titled “Filipinos warned against falling prey to Ghanaian visa scam”
A careful study of the news dubbed “Diasporian News” revealed that it emanated from Nigeria and supposed to be coming from an unknown Department of Foreign Affairs, warning overseas Filipinos against Ghanaian visa scammers.
The report said that the Philippine Embassy in Abuja in Nigeria issued the advisory note after receiving reports that a group of Ghanaian nationals have been recruited to travel to the Philippines to process their working visas to enable them to work for some Australian companies in exchange for $5,000 each, excluding ticket costing $2,000”.
The news did not say that Ghanaians were perpetrating the scam. Instead it said Ghanaians were the victims of the illegality. The question then is, who were the scammers Ghanaians or who?.
Apart from exhibiting poor presentation, the writer of the story failed to provide concrete evidence of those Ghanaians mentioned as having travelled to Philippines’ to process their working visas to work for Australian companies.
We require the writer of the story and globalnation.inquirer.net to mention the Several Ghanaian nationals who have already been victimized by scam operators through schemes promising and recruiting individuals to travel to the Philippines to process Australian visas via telephone or social networking sites in the Philippines,
The writer claims that the Philippines Embassy in Nigeria is the source of the news which has urged Filipinos to exercise caution in communicating with unknown individuals through telephone lines or social networking sites, particularly in providing sensitive information and responding to untrusted telephone or Internet offerings,.
After reading the news one is confused and does not know whether the scammers were targeting Ghanaians seeking jobs in Australia or phillipinos seeking jobs through the use of internet or telephones. Those who have not read the story must look at it again. For us it is a way to denigrate Ghana especially the Ghana Immigration Service whose name has been used to design a form for the purpose. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Ghana Immigration Service and the Ghanaian Embassy in Nigeria have the responsibility to investigate the matter in order to arrive at the truth in it.
Executive Director
EANFOWORLD FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
0244 370345/ 0264370345/0208844791 [email protected]/[email protected]