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Travel agents flourishing in Punjab

HOSHIARPUR, AUG. 8. The lust for earning huge money and craze for going abroad have a great attraction for Punjabi youths, especially of middle and poor classes, to work in foreign countries. Youth of poor class generally go to the gulf countries through legal or illegal ways for doing jobs like heavy vehicle drivers, carpenters, masons, welders, steel fixer, bar binders and labourers.

Youths of middle class families go on study basis to Canada, Australia, Cyprus by paying Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1 lakh each to the travel agents or their sub agents for gulf countries and Rs. 4 lakh to Rs. 7 lakh for countries like Australia and Canada for study purposes. Majority of parents raised loans or sell their land/gold jewellery to arrange the require amount for sending their wards abroad. In many of the cases travel agents either disappeared after getting the money or send these youths to unimportant countries where they are either arrested or deported to India.

Keeping in view the increasing cases of cheating of innocent persons by the so-called travel or sub travel agents, scattered in almost all the villages of Hoshiarpur district, a special economic cell has been set up in community policing resources centre. Sukhdev Singh Bhatti, SP, told reporters here today that as many as 730 applications against travel agents for their cheating had been received by the economic cell of community policing resources centre during 2003, out of which 94 were recommended for registration of cases.

Between Rs. 1 crore seventy lakh sixteen thousand and four hundred had been recovered from these so called travel agents and returned back the same to the complainants, he claimed. As many as 389 applications had also been received during January to July 2004, of which 43 were recommended for registration of cases and Rs. 50,40,457 had been recovered from these travel agents and returned back the same to the complainants.

Mr. Bhatti said that 71 cases had been registered under section 420, 406 IPC against 123 so called travel agents during 2003 and 38 cases against 79 travel agents up to July 2004. He said that action against many of the travel agents could not be taken due to non-availability of proper evidences against them. He advised youths not to go after so called travel agents who were befooling and looting them in the name of sending them abroad. Mr. Bhatti said that there was a great rush for verification of the applications for new passports. As many as 25408 applications were received by the verification cell of community policing resources centre during 2003 for verification for new passports and 15129 up to June 2004. After making verifications these were sent to the regional passport office Jalandhar for further action. Jarnail Singh of village Mustapur who had recently come back from Dubai told that hard labour had to be done in gulf countries to earn money.

PTI

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