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BY LEDIATI TAN
YOU can earn $100 for every household you harass.
Too risky?
How about $10 per household and all you have to do is walk around and check that the harassment has taken place?
A 27-year-old ex-runner was succumbed to temptation and took on this 'easy job', only to end up being arrested by the police and charged with harassment.
He told The New Paper that he was offered $100 per address to spray paint and write on walls.
When he turned the job down, he was offered an easier job which involved going to different addresses to check for signs of harassment. The pay: $10 per address.
He claimed he never met the loan sharks as his jobs were assigned to him through phone calls by different people.
He was paid weekly through bank transfers.
He claimed he cannot testify against his recruiters as he does not know who they are. His case is not unique.
Many teenage runners put themselves on the line working for Ah Longs. But when they get caught, most are unable to put a face or even a name to the people they work for. In the end, the masterminds get away scot-free while the teenagers are punished.
Third party
Counsellors told The New Paper that teenage runners are often recruited through a third party, which makes it difficult to pinpoint the real culprits behind the harassment.
How do loan sharks recruit without exposing their identity?
Miss Nurfaazah Safaruan, centre manager of Ain Society's BBE Gen-Y Youth Hub, said that many of these teenage runners were gang members who were recruited to work for loan sharks through the recommendation of older members that they trust.
She said that these youths run errands for loan sharks as another way to earn extra income - on top of peddling pirated DVDS and other contraband goods.
While older gang members may know the identity of the loan sharks, said Miss Nurfaazah, the teenage runners often do not tell on them for various reasons.
'Sometimes they are too scared to even reveal the older gang member's name and end up bearing the consequences,' she said.
The centre director of a family service centre in the north also confirmed that most of these teenage runners are not only engaged as runners, but are involved in other clandestine activities such as collecting protection money and selling contraband cigarettes.
Some of them also have a gang background, said the centre director, who did not want to be named to avoid identifying the groups the centre works with.
Hot spots
He added that LAN gaming centres, arcades and billiard centres are the main recruitment hot spots of teenage runners.
'Some of these people befriend these youths through LAN gaming or through paying for their LAN gaming (sessions),' said the centre director.
'Some recruiters are in their late teens. Many of them are not that much older than the youths themselves.'
But there is also another group of people who turn into runners to pay off their debts.
These are the youth gamblers, said Reverend Tan Lye Keng, executive director of One Hope Centre which runs a support group for gambling addicts and their families.
Even then, these people are still clueless about who the masterminds behind the loan shark syndicates are, said Reverend Tan, adding that sometimes their recruiters are runners themselves.
While the trend of teenagers becoming runners is worrying, new harassment tactics used by loan sharks is equally troubling.
Last month, Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee told Parliament that these tactics have become increasingly dangerous.
They include setting fire to items placed in front of victims' flats, spraying vehicles with loan-shark graffiti and locking innocent victims in their flats.
These runners tend to be paid different amounts for different duties carried out.
This means that some runners may be lured by bigger cash rewards to commit more violent harassment against their victims.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
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