Be cautious of scammers during hard economic times

Over the last couple of months the rate of employment has risen in Kenya and this has resulted to untold suffering especially amongst the youth who are also suffering from the high cost of living. According to research conducted by Macrotrends the rate of unemployment in Kenya has risen to 13 per cent. This has left very many youths desperate for work which has seen an offshore for scammers to snatch the little resources that this youths have acquired from their hard toil under the sun.

Con artists have devised new ways of making a living through the desperation of most youths. When job vacancies are announced, organizations receive a lot of applications when they can only offer 5-10 vacancies at most. We are in a situation where most organizations are laying off more workers because they can no longer cater for their salaries and they few workers that remain have to suffer from major salary deductions from the managers to the casual laborers. This deductions have made most of the senior personnel to look for alternatives of recovering from the salary cut, and have resulted to working with con artist.

When they receive the CV’s from various applicants they get the opportunity to look at their personal details hence acquiring their phone numbers. They call the applicant and tell them that they have a good chance of acquiring the job and they only have one more requirement to fulfil. For instance they tell you that you only need a medical certificate which is required by the organization and this is where the conning begins since in a normal scenario you can get the medical certificate from any government hospital but since they want your money they tell you the specific hospital that you are to visit and even go to the extent of giving the name and phone number of the specific doctor. The desperate youth without knowing falls into trap and ends up loosing his money.

Its honestly saddening to see that as a country instead of making forward progress, we continue to fall deeper and deeper into the ramshackle of deception. Pinning the responsibility of ensuring that we build a better Kenyan for future generation to live freely without the fear of being conned to the government is unfair. This can only be achieved through team work. It’s individual effort to create a better working environment and the government to make sure that those reported of taking part in such malicious acts are severely punished.