Kenya: Is Kenyan Flour Miller UNGA Limited Urgently Hiring? No, Viral Job Ads On Facebook Are Fake

9 June 2023
Africa Check (Johannesburg)
By Dancan Bwire

IN SHORT: Scammers often target those desperate for jobs with fake ads and use names of well-known companies. Kenyans, beware of this job scam.

"UNGA LIMITED COMPANY is urgently looking for the following personel, packers, drivers, cashier's, ICT literate, salesman, supervisor, Watchman, loaders, if interested kindly whatsupp 0753395384 for quick response," reads an enticing job ad posted on different Kenyan Facebook pages and groups in May 2023.

Unga Limited is an affiliate of Unga Holdings, one of the largest millers in East Africa.

Each of the adverts have provided different WhatsApp numbers and asked those interested to reach out for further engagement. The posts include photos of flour packets.

It has been posted here, here, here, here, here and here.

But is it legitimate and is Unga Limited hiring? We checked.

Clues of a scam

The poor writing in the ad is the first obvious sign that it's a scam. It has odd punctuations and misspellings, which is uncharacteristic of an established company.

The posts only give WhatsApp contact numbers for enquiries but none of the numbers appear under Unga Limited website's "contact us" section. This is another red flag, as reputable companies provide official email addresses and phone numbers on their websites.

We also noticed some numbers in the posts have appeared in other fake adverts we have debunked before, which asked us for a "registration fee" when contacted. Unga Limited has in the past clarified that it never requests payment during the hiring process.

We checked and found that none of the adverts appear on the company website's "career" section.

All signs point to the Facebook ads being fake.

Read the original story, with links and other resources.
Africa Check is a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and in the media. Twitter @AfricaCheck and www.africacheck.org

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