Indians Duped In Malaysia By Job Agents

Kuala Lumpur, March 22 — About 150 people from India have been stranded in Malaysia following being duped the agent providing them jobs. The job agents got these Indians into Malaysia and they allegedly fled with their documents and money.

Indian High Commission official said on Monday in Kuala Lumpur, to the reporters, “Thirty nine Indians came to us to seek help, we immediately arranged for a shelter for them.”

According to the local daily, most of the Indians being stranded are from Maharashtra and Bihar.

Official said the people came there on a tourist visa and they were promised jobs.

Official added, “At least 150 are waiting in India to fly into the country here, we have alerted the officials to check their visas… The agent did not bring them here on a work visa. It is also the fault of these gullible men who give large sums of money in India to ruthless so called recruitment agents without checking their visas.”

Every year thousands of skilled and semi-skilled Indians come to Malaysia dreaming of big money that are promised by job agents.

Each year there are several cases in which the workers are abused by their employers or it is a non payment of salaries. The men wants to go back home but they are unable as their passports are kept by the employers.

‘This was home to Indians…we will be ready in a year’

The Park Residence: each room destroyed

It took the suicide squad three hours to destroy the Park Residence guest house, home to many Indians stationed in Kabul. In those three hours, two terrorists dragged out guests from rooms, shot them dead from point blank range and threw grenades into each room to ensure destruction.

Today, there is hardly anything left to identify it as the “home of Indians in Kabul” but the owners of the popular guest house, sending out a clear message that they will not be cowed down by such attacks, promise to be back on their feet within a year.

Less than a week after the attack, new plans are already on the drawing board. The owners have decided to pull down the entire gutted structure and build a new guest house. The plan is ambitious but they are determined to ensure the place is up and running in a year.

“How can we shut down? This was the home of Indians in Kabul. We will get back with a new building within a year,” said manager Khalid Essa who survived the attack by jumping over the compound wall after the firing began. Essa and his staff survived but they lost seven guests, including four Indians who were here on official work.

The staff at the guest house — they take pride in the fact that this was “the first hotel in Afghanistan to provide internet connection” to guests — are wary of people taking photographs inside the compound. But the condition of the guest house gives a fair idea of what happened last Friday.

Fresh attack on Indian, Sri Lankan in Oz

In a fresh incident of violence against Asians in Australia, a Sri Lankan man and his Indian wife were attacked and racially abused by a group of drunken men at their home in Melbourne.

A group of 25 drunken thugs bashed up 60-year-old Ranjit Sahasranaman, who is married to Indian-origin Agalya Sahasranamn, outside his own home in Carrams Down suburb on Sunday morning.

Sahasranaman, a Sri Lankan national, revealed his over two-and-a-half hour ordeal of how he fought back with the thugs till police arrived and dispersed them, the Herald Sun reported on Tuesday.

Sahasranaman, who has lived in Australia for 19 years with his wife and two kids, said he was assaulted and racially abused by the gang of mostly white men who damaged his back fence and gained entry to his yard.

He said he was forced to fight back with a bar when the intruders got within centimetres of his back door.

Interestingly, this time the police dropped home one of the injured offender who allegedly got hurt by Sahasranaman.

“They were throwing punches at me,” Sahasranaman said, adding “they were calling names and told me to get lost from this country.”

The attack came at a time when Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith is in India to discuss with authorities there the security preparation for the Commonwealth Games and the issue of attacks on Indians here.

There have been over 100 cases of attacks on Indians, mostly on students, in Australia since the last year.

Meanwhile, Sahasranaman also alleged that police was slow to respond to his ‘SOS’.

Indians among most attractive people

Indians figure among the first ten in the list of the most attractive-looking people in the world while Americans top the chart, a new survey has found.

While the US, home to Hollywood hunk George Clooney and actress Angelina Jolie among others, has come first, the second position is occupied by Brazil in the poll of more than 5,000 globe-trotting Britons. Spain, which boasts Hollywood actress Penelope Cruz as one of its natives, has come third.

Blonde, tanned surfers of Australia saw it voted into fourth place, while Italy came fifth, according to the survey.

Sexy Swedes, such as model Victoria Silvstedt, helped the Scandinavian country into sixth spot, while England made it to the seventh place in the poll.

India, home to Bollywood beauties like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Kareena Kapoor and Katrina Kaif, and heartthrob Salman Khan, among others, has come eighth, while France came ninth and Canada finished off the top 10.

Other countries to feature in the top 20 include Portugal, Japan and Netherlands. Germany completed the top 20. A spokeswoman for ‘ www.onepoll.com   ‘, which carried out the survey, was quoted by ‘The Daily Telegraph’ as saying, “America has got a lot on offer and boasts some of the sexiest people on the planet.

“The likes of Jessica Alba, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt all help America’s image as a hot bed of good looking people. But with a population of more than 300 million, they do have an unfair advantage.

“But in fairness, when you think of good looking countries, Sweden, Italy, France and Brazil talent all spring to mind before us lazy, pale Brits. If you’re looking for some fun in the sun you now know where to head on holiday.”

Brand Australia suffering from attacks on Indian students: Minister

Australian Minister for Resources Martin Ferguson

Brand Australia has suffered following attacks on Indian students in the past nine months and this will cause long-term damage if not attended to, says a visiting Australian minister.

“The attacks (on Indian students) have hurt us in terms of perception about Australia and that’s why our law enforcement agencies have been so committed to pursuing arrests and prosecution and have been successful in some instances for long-term imprisonment. There have been 67 prosecutions in recent times,” Australian Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson told IANS in an interview here.

Mr. Ferguson said that the Australian government was not taking these attacks lightly and will do everything possible to curb the criminal acts.

“Of course if you don’t attend to these difficulties then they will do us long-term damage. Historically one of the attractions of Australia is that it’s a safe welcoming society…it’s very much such a society,” said the minister who has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Batman, a constituency in Melbourne, which has been the epicentre of recent attacks.

“My constituency is close to central Melbourne and there are people from 150 different countries. It a harmonious local community and there are very few places in the world where you get people from so many different countries living together and working together,” said the 57-year-old Australian Labour Party member.

“My constituency is a prime example of society in Australia. But I also have a significant number of young university students living in my electorate, in universities of Melbourne and Trobe who are very much devoting their energy and applying their minds to educational opportunities,” he said.

The spate of attacks on Indians in Australia has caused an outcry in India. One of the vicious attacks proved fatal.

The minister said steps needed to be taken to ensure quality education to Indian students at affordable cost.

“I think it is fair to say that in terms of vocational education and some English language courses, we have to attend to some issues to make sure that young Indian students get a quality education opportunity and are capable of paying for it without spending too much time working rather than applying their minds to educational requirements,” he said.

According to the minister, one of the major causes of attacks on Indian students is that they live in crime-prone suburbs and work in late shifts to survive in the country.

“There has been a 27 percent increase in the number of students in 2008-09 from the previous year. There has been tension in Victoria (the province of which Melbourne is the capital). More than 50 percent Indian students actually go there. The real problem we had is with respect to some of the students living in some of the suburbs which historically had high instances of criminality,” Mr. Ferguson said.

“They work in service stations, fast food outlets, take shift jobs at all hours of night, which is when criminality occurs. In some ways their lifestyle has put them in the frontline of attacks. We tried some laws in Victoria, we have put more police and we have got them to do random checks on people,” he added.

Indians feel attacks not due to race, but other factors

With incidents of attacks on Indians here on the rise, many community members feel the root cause of such assaults is not race but the students’ financial conditions that force them to be out at night for odd jobs to meet high cost of living in Australia.

Many Indians in Australia feel students from India should be “alert” and “careful” if they are travelling at odd hours in the night. “It is not the race that is the problem but it is their hard financial conditions,” Ravi Bhatia, Primus CEO and a leading community member, said reacting to the latest attack in which a 22-year old Sikh was attacked while he was asleep at a bus stop.

“What makes you sleep at that time at a bus stop? Are you not inviting problems by doing so?” he asked.

“Students as migrants have some obligations also and they should take basic safety measures,” he said.

Srinivas Vasan of Federation of Indian Association of Victoria (FIAV) said Australia is the most multicultural society and has allowed people from all over the world to live here peacefully.

Over 30 Indian students were attacked in various Australian cities from June to September.

“We have been urging students on some do’s and don’ts like organising their late night travels, not carrying cash and being careful and alert. If you are working late nights and travelling odd hours in public transport you are expected to be alert and careful,” Mr. Vasan said.

Echoing his views, Neeraj Nanda, Editor of a local Indian newspaper who conducted a survey on what could be the cause of such attacks, said majority of Indians settled here felt that their own countrymen were largely responsible for the attacks.

“Talking to many families I found all most everyone felt that Indians were to be blamed for inviting problems.

They refuse to integrate in Australian society that sorts of annoys the localites,” he said.

While Australia still tops as a safest destination for many Indian students, for many of them things are not as rosy as painted by their agents back home and interestingly, there has been a pattern noticed in such incidents.

Most of the students in vocational courses hail from rural parts of India. With little or no financial support they pick odd jobs like in security, cleaner, at petrol stations or drive a cab late at night.

To add to the problem, they rent out in cheap and crime-prone areas and use public transport at odd hours which make them highly prone to such attacks.

“We have many Indian students who work odd hours and do not sleep properly for days as they work odd hours,” said Elizabeth Drozd, Victorian multiculturalism commissioner and a university teacher.

“They attend their classes in the morning and work late nights to meet out their living,” Ms. Drozd said, adding many of these students feel so tired and they sleep anywhere.

However, Gautam Gupta of Federation of Indian Student Association disagrees with the view. He said if someone sleeping at late night at a bus stop was risky then half of India was at high risk.

Mr. Bhatia said like Indians even Chinese student population is huge here but majority of Chinese belong to affluent families and they can afford expensive education and living.

“Chinese do not become such targets as they are from rich families and can easily afford the expenses of living and studying here. Aspiring students should be able to fully fund course fee and not rely on a part-time work wages,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Australian government has suspended almost 200 agents operating in a number of countries for lodging online student visa applications because of evidence of fraud or poor approval rates.