South Africa’s most credible and truthful career information website, The Bursary Bin, draws your attention to yet another scam using social media and classified ads to defraud unemployed South Africans seeking jobs, learnerships and internships. We draw your attention to this statement from the Department of Transport in the Western Cape:

An advertisement for Western Cape Traffic Officer learnerships placed on Gumtree and asking for a R150 “application fee” is a scam.

The advertiser calls himself or herself Violet Naidoo and uses a Gmail address. The person claims to own a 100% black-owned recruitment company with a mandate from the Department of Transport and Public Works to recruit candidates for training.

Members of the public are advised that the Department never makes use of any agency to recruit candidate traffic officers, and that no application fees are ever payable. Advertisements for trainee traffic officers only ever appear in newspapers and on the website of the Western Cape Government. The only entity with any authority to recruit and train provincial traffic officers is the Department’s Gene Louw Traffic College.

The Department was alerted to this scam by an aspiring traffic officer who wanted to verify whether the Gumtree advertisement was legitimate.

The man said that he had applied to become a traffic officer three times, having passed two out of three tests. He was willing to pay the application fee if indeed it would give him a chance to be considered again.

The advertiser informed the aspirant officer had been shortlisted for an interview to take place within weeks December for places in a training course due to commence in January 2016. In fact, the Department’s next intake of trainees will take place in mid-2016, and official advertisements will be placed closer to the time.

Members of the public are requested to alert the Gene Louw Traffic College on 021 983 1500 to report any similar attempts to defraud hopeful job seekers. The matter has been reported to the provincial and national fraud and corruption combating authorities.

Issued by Byron la Hoe of Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works