E-mail offering S'pore health-care jobs a hoax

E-mail offering S'pore health-care jobs a hoax

SINGAPORE - E-mail messages to Filipinos offering jobs at Jurong Medical Centre and Singapore General Hospital (SGH) have been flagged as a hoax.

The scammers request payment of 3,800 pesos (S$115) for an "Embassy Visa Interview Preparation".

JurongHealth, which runs Jurong Medical Centre, and SGH clarified on their Facebook pages on Monday and Feb 18 respectively that that they are not conducting such recruitment exercises.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) told My Paper yesterday that it was alerted on Monday to the fact that a few hospitals had received queries on the legitimacy of an e-mail circulated in the Philippines by a consultancy firm promising jobs in Singapore's health-care sector and requesting upfront payment.

"The consultancy firm is not related to nor hired by MOH or any of the public hospitals," the ministry said, noting that the e-mail messages cite the names of public hospitals, carry a screenshot of the available positions from the hospitals' websites and are signed off using the names of the hospitals' directors of nursing or human resources.

MOH advised people who receive suspicious requests for payments for jobs, purportedly made on behalf of MOH or Singapore public hospitals, to verify them with the hospitals and the ministry.

JurongHealth yesterday said it has responded individually to e-mail messages requesting verification of recruitment e-mail and has also lodged a police report.

Singapore health-care institutions are not the first to be named in scams, said the Philippine Ambassador to Singapore Minda Calaguian-Cruz, as institutions from other countries have been targeted before.

She said: "It appears to be the same group of scammers (as in earlier cases) who are using different e-mail addresses to target Filipino medical workers, particularly nurse applicants."

A Feb 20 statement by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said: "After offering Filipino medical workers non-existent jobs in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, swindlers are now luring them to 'work' in Singapore."

The fraudulent e-mail messages include offers of "nursing or caring jobs" in hospitals such as Sydney Adventist Hospital in Australia and Queensway Carleton Hospital in Canada.

nggwen@sph.com.sg


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