PESHAWAR, April 27: The Pakistan Awami Party has demanded of the government to hold an inquiry into the affairs of the Overseas Employment Corporation which, according to it, has been fleecing people on the pretext of providing them jobs abroad.

Speaking at a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Friday, PAP president Fanoos Gujjar claimed that Seoul had blacklisted the OEC in 1994 for failing to meet the recruitment criteria of South Korea.

He said the OEC was today involved in recruiting 3,600 skilled workers for South Korea as it had not learnt from the past mistakes made by its corrupt officials.

Mr Gujjar alleged that the government had dished out all the vacancies among ministers, MNAs, senators and office-bearers of the ruling party, thus ignoring the poor people in the process.

He said the MNAs and senators had obliged their blue-eyed boys by distributing these vacancies among them.

He accused the OEC functionaries of selling an employment form for Rs25,000 and charging Rs75,000 from an unskilled person for short-listing him or her. Last year the corporation had sent 94 unskilled people abroad, who had greased the palms of the OEC officials, but all of them were blacklisted in South Korea.

Mr Gujjar said the needy people who had submitted their applications with the OEC one year ago had not received any call from the corporation as yet.

He claimed that all the unskilled people, who had the backing of ministers and MNAs, had not been put through the required tests. Mr Gujjar said: “The OEC charges Rs1,050 from each candidate. So far it has sent five million workers abroad and amassed Rs52 billion. Similarly, the OEC has generated Rs3,250 million against insurance charges.”

He said all successive governments had misused these amounts for political purposes. The amount should have been spent on welfare programmes for overseas employees and their children but this was not done.

Mr Gujjar asked the government to spend OEC funds on the establishment of vocational and technical centres in the NWFP so that the people from backward areas could benefit from them.

He said: “Each passing year, about 1,200,000 new job seekers enter the labour market but the government cannot entertain them. This rising problem can only be tackled with the support of public and private sectors.”