Morung Express News
Dimapur | August 23
Rampant unemployment in Nagaland is now not just a nuisance but has almost proved ruinous for the 10 Naga youths who were almost duped with con jobs. A small time vernacular newspaper, Bhartiya Adarsh Samachar, had recently advertised vacancy for 10 posts of press reporters with a highly tempting salary of Rs 9000 per month, during the five months training period as ‘stipend’ and Rs 15,000 after training.
After the initial telephonic interview of all the applicants, it was reported that about 15 candidates were called for the face to face interview, out of which 10 were selected. Suspicion arouse when the successful candidates were asked to deposit a sum of Rs. 6000 each as ‘registration fee’ for their appointment as press reporter (trainee).
Upon investigation, it was found that the recruiting officer was himself a Naga, who had been similarly duped when he applied to the same advertisement in another local daily in the month of June. Talking to The Morung Express, the recruiting personnel, John (name changed), explained that he had been made the Incharge in Nagaland after he had received his appointment from the Head Office in Delhi. John produced documents received and stamped envelopes from the Bhartiya Adarsh Samachar office with his appointment letter, identity card and several other documents.
The appointment letter held instructions on his job during the five months of “intensive training”, wherein the trainee was required to recruit other new trainees each month, enroll annual subscribers and collect advertisements for the newspaper. The trainees are also required to report to the head office in Delhi at their own expense and each month with the registration fee of the new recruits. Interestingly, the instruction also stated that the present appointment of the trainees was on probationary basis and they would be paid the monthly stipend conditional to their execution of the designated work. Another intriguing fact was that the identity card issued by the Bhartiya Adarsh Samachar carried a disclaimer stating that the newspaper would not be held responsible for the misuse of the identity card issued by them.
The recruiting personnel in Nagaland, John, displayed complete ignorance over the unethical dealings of his company. Having received his appointment and instructions via telephone and post, he said that he had thought this opportunity could solve the widespread unemployment in the state.
“I am totally innocent, I cannot bluff any guy from our society and take the money”, he claimed producing the receipt of his own payment that he had made to the Bhartiya Adarsh Samachar. Disclosing details of his own experience and how he had gotten his parents to pay his registration, John stated that he had been saved from a bigger blunder before he could collect the same from other local candidates while also lamenting the trouble that the others had to go through because of his ignorance. He also revealed the names of two other persons from Nagas, who had been appointed along with him to the BAS as trainees in June.
Ironically, investigations revealed that the Bhartiya Adarsh Samachar is a registered fortnightly Hindi newspaper under Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) bearing registration number DELHIN/2002/06680 based in Delhi with Dinesh Kr.Sharma as the Managing Director. However the newspaper was allegedly used as a cover to mislead aspiring reporters who actually do very little if any reporting at all.
Meanwhile similar news reports of young people being conned by the Bhartiya Adarsh Samachar, in the same manner, has appeared in Jammu and Meghalaya in 2005. While in Meghalaya, two of the youngsters who had been to Delhi and back after applying for the job had filed an FIR at the Laitumkhrah Police Station in Shillong, it was reported that the Jammu police had registered a case and arrested two people in this connection. However in the case of Nagaland, except for John and his two friends, a large scale bungle has been avoided for the candidates who were supposed to make the payment today by the timely action of the Dimapur, Naga Student Union.
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