COIMBATORE: After languishing in the jails of Thailand for nearly 22 days — thanks to the negligence of an oversees employment agency – 13 youth from the State safely returned home on Sunday. The 13 youth from villages in Tirupur, Erode, Dharmapuri and Ooty districts, were illegally taken to Thailand to work in an electronics factory by an Ooty-based overseas employment agency, on tourist visas. According to S Karthikeyan of Kangeyam, who was one among the 13, “They promised us a job with monthly salary of `35,000. But even after a month, they just made us stay in a building at Phuket, a tourist town, and did not find us any jobs. One day, they asked us to go to another town to renew our expired visas. We were waiting on the road for a bus when the local police rounded us up.” Karthikeyan blamed the apathy of the employment agency for their ordeal. The tourist guide paid up a fine in the court and the next day, the 13 were handed over to the immigration department. H Gavasar of Ooty recounted the harrowing days in detention. “We were locked up in a cell and the immigration department insisted that we produce our return tickets to let us free. The families of the youth then approached the State police after they did not receive word from their kin for a long time.The police then swung into action. The incident has brought to fore the perils of illegal migration of workers under the tourist visas, which ironically is the most common practice adopted by several overseas employment agencies. He had got nearly `3 lakh as fees to get them employed abroad.
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