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The management of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH, Enugu has uncovered three syndicates that specialise in defrauding job seekers of huge sums of money under the guise of providing non‑existent employment in the hospital.
About N12 million was said to have been realised from the desperate job seekers by members of the syndicate, three of who are now in custody of the Special Anti‑Robbery Squad, SARS, in Enugu.
Briefing newsmen on the arrest of some members of the job racketeering syndicate at the permanent site of the hospital at Ituku‑Ozalla, Chief Medical Director, Dr. Christopher Amah, said the suspects were apprehended following discreet investigations by a committee he set up following complaints from unsuspecting members of the public that they were defrauded by some people who promised to offer them employment in the hospital.
Two other members of the syndicate, including a porter in the hospital, have absconded. The junior hospital staff had allegedly conspired with a non‑staff and defrauded some applicants to the tune of N7.45 million.
A total of 34 applicants were said to have paid between N370,000 and N400,000 each to the porter and his cohorts.
Another two‑man syndicate, comprising a pharmacist operating in the hospital and an unnamed civil servant, allegedly raked in N3.6 million from the applicants but one of the culprits, a pharmacist (names withheld) confessed that his group realised only N900,000 (N100,000 each) from nine applicants with an agreement to receive the balance of N300,000 from each of them after employment papers had been issued to them.
The third syndicate is made up of two senior staff of the hospital including a physiotherapist, who however claimed that he was “set up” by some members of his department. He confessed to have received N290,000 from a woman for the purpose of purchasing a land for her and not for the purpose of employment in the hospital.
Vanguard gathered that the fraudsters capitalised on the recent recruitment exercise where some positions that became vacant on account of retirement by some staff were filled.
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