AT least 10 women who sought jobs at the Senxinyuan job agency were coaxed to a bogus factory and then smuggled to Hong Kong to work for vice parlors, the Daily Sunshine said Wednesday.

Police in Buji Township, Longgang District, on Oct. 14 arrested a suspect surnamed Ma who said he had lured at least 10 young women to his residence from the job agency this year. The women had been smuggled to Hong Kong and forced to work in the vice trade.

The 40-year-old suspect, from Hunan Province, said his boss, whose identity is unknown, agreed to pay him 1,000 yuan (US$120) for each woman he "recruited." Ma had posed as a factory executive recruiting clerks at Senxinyuan.

Police said 18 policemen had been assigned to investigate the disappearance of at least 10 women after the paper published a series of articles from late September.

The police said they were making headway in their investigations and had the names of 10 missing women aged between 18 and 24.

At Ma's residence, police seized women's clothes and 13 telephone cards which Ma said had belonged to the abducted women.

Ma said while he "recruited" women at Senxinyuan, other men employed by his boss did the same at other recruitment agencies.

Of about six licensed job agencies in Buji, Senxinyuan is the largest, dealing with up to 2,000 people seeking work each day.

Media reports have suggested a surge in crimes targeting jobseekers who are eager to land a job. The Southern Metropolitan News said police detained a man Tuesday after he allegedly tried to rape a woman during an interview at the Sungang Building in Luohu District.

Police and the labor bureau have urged a tightening of regulations in the job market. Job agencies said it would be difficult for them to verify the authenticity of documents provided by recruiters. Some recruiters just posed as jobseekers to enter recruitment agencies, as Ma did, and approached their targets with attractive, bogus offers.

(Shenzhen Daily October 23, 2003)