Advertisements promising education and employment in countries like Australia, Canada, UK, USA and New Zealand, should not be trusted unless they are certified by the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau. These agencies are mainly involved in recruiting people for jobs rather than sending them for education, Chairman of the SLFEB Kingsley Ranawaka said yesterday.

He said that two such agencies had been raided in Kurunegala where investigating officers of the Bureau had discovered passports, applications and forged documents prepared to obtain visas. One of the agencies was on the second floor of the Premachandra Building, while the other was a Foreign Employment Agency on Keppetipola Road, Kurunegala.

Both agencies were recruiting people stating that they would be sent to the UK, USA, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Italy Japan, Cyprus and Dubai for work and education. In one agency there were more than eighty passports.

These people would have definitely taken money on the pretext of sending them to work and study in those countries.

Job Agencies are not authorized to send people to work and learn at the same time. If it is for educational purposes that they are sending people abroad, then it should be education and nothing else, Ranawaka said.

He warned the public that they should be wary of so called education consultants.

It is obvious that these people are being sent for work and not study, he said.