Employment agencies and money-lending companies in the Philippines are cheating women applying for jobs abroad out of thousands of pounds by charging illegal fees paid with high-interest loans, The Guardian reports citing interviews and documents. Recruiters take applicants, usually women searching for domestic work, to financial firms they have links with to take out loans to pay the fees, which come with interest rates often exceeding 130%, according to documented complaints.

Under Philippine law, lenders are not allowed to charge overseas workers more than 8% annual interest. Recruitment agencies are prohibited from charging placement fees for overseas jobs, but migrant workers can be charged for training and medical examinations. The amount they can charge is capped at PHP 5,000 (USD 90.5). However, it was reported that some women would pay far more than the capped amount and would turn to lending companies for a loan to cover the costs. Some workers who applied for jobs in Hong Kong and Taiwan told the migrant rights organisation Migrasia and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that they and their families had been subjected to threats and harassment by the lenders when they could not meet the repayments.

Migrasia, which filed complaints about the women’s treatment with 10 Philippine government departments said the authorities had failed to act yet. “We believe these fees and schemes are a huge problem that affect hundreds of thousands of women each year,” said a spokesperson.

“While it seemed like there was mild improvement leading up to Covid, over the past four years there has been a general increase in the size and likelihood of these debts occurring.”