‘MNC’s website, non-functional contacts, refunding of fee raise eye-brows’
Srinagar: When local newspapers published advertisement of Vista Group about hundreds of jobs, unemployed youth risked their lives and came from across Kashmir despite unavailability of public transport to reach at its office at Jawahar Nagar here.
The youths have lot of questions and ambiguity about the process, yet they rushed to the venue. Questions among aspirants arose because in the Kashmir Valley, a number of consultancies have earlier lured youth for providing jobs abroad and in India.
An aspirant who had come from Ahmednagar in Soura for applying for a post in IT said he had submitted the form on the very next day when the advertisement was out in media.
“I submitted the form along with a demand draft of Rs 550. I was asked then that no form will be accepted without demand draft. Even the application form says that Demand Draft is mandatory. I fulfilled all the formalities. Today morning I got a call to collect back the Demand Draft,” said the aspirant.
But why did the group repaid the money back to the applicants when it had mentioned the submitting of draft is mandatory?
Farhat Amin, who introduced himself as Media Manager of the Group, said that the demand draft was not collected from all the applicants.
“Only 17 applicants had submitted the demand drafts. We could not see the applicants have submitted the drafts because of the rush and huge number of forms. We repaid the drafts today,” Amin said.
Not only are applicants raising questions about the submission and repayment of drafts, but they are raising queries about the group itself; its website, its launch, and about its overseas offices.
“I checked its Website where links to number of tabs do not open. Even I called the tollfree and other contact numbers the group has provided in the ad, but the numbers are not working,” said Rafiq Ahmad, an applicant.
Amin said that the group was registered in 2008 as Vista World and it had its website under the same name. “Recently, we changed the name of the company to Vista Universe and redesigned as www.vistauniverse.com,” he said.
When these reporters checked the website, its domain has been created on October 16 this year only which creates doubts about the credibility group that has advertised hundreds of jobs for Kashmiri youth, who are gripped in a four months long unrest.
While Amin maintains that they are an educational consultancy, but their website claims they are all-rounders. From education, to designing to media to even matrimony, they almost deal with everything.
Amin was not able to convince when he was asked a wide range of questions about the refunding of the money when their application form makes it mandatory to submit a Demand Draft.
Asked was this move of repaying money to candidates a fire-fighting measure as their company has come under the scanner on social media since Thursday, he said there is nothing like that. “Actually we forgot to tell the people earlier that there was no need of paying money by Demand Drafts during submitting the forms,” he said.
Amin said the company has been started in 2008 and has been working in different countries, but the in-depth details of the website reveal that its domain has been purchased on October 3 this year and the domain has been created on 03-oct-2016. And the land line number the company provides in Srinagar has also been registered this month only.
Besides this, most of the sub tabs of the website are not functioning and other categories of the website are under maintenance. The website in no way gives the impression that it is of any multi-national company, but their office here in Srinagar gives a feel of any big company.
Meanwhile, sources in the government said that the administration has taken cognizance of the process and have been closely watching it.
Interestingly some MLAs have given recommendation letters to the aspirants seeking the jobs. Many aspirants showed their forms who had recommendation letters from senior MLAs.
What is Vista group?
Vista group claims to be a multinational company operating since 2008 in Gurgoan and Singapore and have now opened its office in Srinagar at a time when there is no such future for such companies given the prevailing turmoil. Vista group is registered with the ministry of corporate affairs under DIN number: 07433936, CIN number: 035100HR2008PTC037918, U92400HR2016PTC058656, U74900HR2016PTC058678, 045209HR2016PTC063749, U92400HR2016PTC063985. (These details were provided by the Vista Group at its office in Jawaharnagar). The name of the actual company that has been registered with the government is Vista Infra group Holding Private Limited and not the “Vista Universe” for which the recruitment process is being conducted.
The company is owned by someone who has given his name as Andy Baig, a Kashmiri hailing from Rawalpora area of Srinagar who has studied abroad. He has changed his name to Andy Baig as it was easy for foreigners to pronounce it.
Though a large number of youth has applied but there is a lot of ambiguity about the group. (PTK)