Punjab Job Portal Caught Stealing Job Postings from Other Sites

Previously we covered a curious development considering the relaunch of the Punjab Job Portal, a project by the Labour and Human Resource Department of Punjab that was recently rolled out. We say curious because, call it a hunch or something, there was something amiss about the whole thing.

We decided to take a look at this matter some more, and here’s what we found – most of the job listings made there have been lifted directly from other job portals, mainly from Rozee.PK.

The much vaunted and publicized Punjab Job Portal is actually stealing all manner of job postings from other sites.

Let’s start with some cold hard proofs first, by discussing a high-profile case:

The Curious Case of Two Similar Job Listings from the UN

Everyone knows United Nations. Working there is considered a dream for many people. The UNO for its part, also employs people in the territories it operates in, through reputable and genuine sources.

In Pakistan, the UN and Rozee.Pk have an exclusive agreement in place. Jobs vacancies at the UN are exclusively listed at a dedicated portal and not to mention, they don’t accept job applications from any other portal or through email or any other medium.

And apparently, in direct contravention of the rules, the same listings are available at Punjab Job Portal as well.

The Original Source : UN

The Duplicated Source: Punjab Job Portal

An attempt to build traffic at a newly-launched portal so that the statistics tell the wrong story to the higher ups and clueless job seekers being offered false hope? Your guess is as good as ours.

Here’s why this is illegal for two reasons. Firstly, this constitutes copyright infringement. And secondly, as mentioned above, the job applicants are not considered when they apply for a listing though the Punjab Job Portal. Because the applications never reach the employer. Talk about leading someone on.

The above Statement reproduced from UN’s Job Portal Managed by Rozee.Pk. You can view it here

Then We Have Bogus Job Listers

So when you copy job listings from all sort of job portals this is what eventually happens: Fake job listings. These fake job listings are common as people post bogus jobs to collect data or to get contacts.

Though it’s hard to police fraudulent job posters with bogus-looking gmail addresses, many unknowing job seekers could apply there as well, seeing as the posting is on a governmental website, assured in the false knowledge of it being the real deal.

To be fair, no online listing sites (OLX comes to mind) are immune from this. But the matter needs to be raised so that people don’t fall into a trap laid by a ‘fraindshipper’ or overzealous telemarketer hoping to get their hands on personal information, to name a few.

Concluding Thoughts

Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, as long as no one’s having the last laugh all the way to the bank. But here the case is that the Punjab Government is claiming credit for something that isn’t theirs in the first place.

Think of how much the hard efforts of other job portals like Rozee, Asaani, Mustaqbil, Noukri and many more are being ruthlessly hurt by a copypasting lackey somewhere out there. We hope the Provincial Government takes notice of this and does its due diligence.