SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
Hyderabad: Suresh (name changed) was driving trucks in Jagtial for about Rs 25,000 a month when officials from the Telangana Overseas Manpower Company (TOMCOM) came to the district recruiting bus drivers for Germany. “I joined the programme after TOMCOM officials filled us with hope in a promotional drive in Jagtial. I was told A2 level would be more than enough to be a bus driver in Germany,” he said.
A2 is the second of six levels on the European language scale, which basic, everyday German.
Suresh, 35, married with two children, quit in 2025 to join the residential programme at the National Academy of Construction (NAC) in Hyderabad. So did Naresh (name changed), a Jagtial truck driver who is also 35 and a father of two.
Avinash, 26, is also married with a child and works as a part time gig worker in Hyderabad.
Nearly two years on, the three of them do not know anyone from the programme who has reached Germany. They say officials changed the language requirement midway and the first two people Siasat.com spoke to are still paying interest on what they borrowed to pay TOMCOM, the Telangana government’s key foreign recruitment agency.
Avinash is also reeling under financial burden.
They are three of 21 candidates shortlisted for the programme, which began in January 2025. Their accounts are backed in part by the programme’s poster, email from HR Sravani Talasila, a Fairstreet admission letter and a WhatsApp screenshot that Siasat.com could not verify.
Up to A2
TOMCOM’s poster advertised a monthly salary of EUR 2,400 (roughly Rs 2.5 lakh) and an initial two-year contract, renewable on performance. Applicants had to be aged between 24 and 40, have passed at least Class 10, have held a Heavy Motor Vehicle (HMV) licence for at least two years and be fluent in English. It promised “GERMAN LANGUAGE TRAINING (Up to A2 Level) by TOMCOM Starts in January 2025.”
Fairstreet India Pvt Ltd, TOMCOM’s partner in the Ausbildung programmes, was involved in this one too. Candidates said the total fee on paper was about Rs 2.82 lakh, to be paid in four installments.
Shortlisted candidates received a Fairstreet Admission Letter after three screening rounds, they said. A copy seen by Siasat.com required them to pass an A2 exam within nine months of signing the letter, at an institute recognised by the German federal government and accepted by the employer. “On successful completion of the A2 level German language examination, the candidate will be scheduled for interviews with German employers,” it said.
The letter also required “B2 level German language certification from an institute recognised by the German federal government within six months of arrival in Germany,” a period candidates would spend on probation. On paper, A2 would get them an interview and B2 would be needed once they were in the job.
Candidates queried the B2 clause anyway, having been told during the recruitment drive that A2 would be enough. Suresh said they raised it with Sravani Talasila, then the HR official from TOMCOM dealing with candidates, who told them the B2 reference was a mistake and would be corrected.
He shared a screenshot of what he said was a WhatsApp exchange in which he pointed out the clause. “It’s A2, I will inform them to update,” the reply reads. Siasat.com could not independently verify the screenshot.
The goalposts move
Avinash alleged that in the beginning they were told be ready for Goethe exam, but later it was changed to OSD (Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch). “Candidates were uncomfortable about this change midway,” he told Siasat.com, and that TOMCOM would handle exam slot bookings.
They paid TOMCOM about Rs 10,000 in exam fees for A2 exam.
About four months into training, candidates began asking when their slots would be booked. It was then, they told Siasat.com, that TOMCOM officials told them employers wanted B1 or B2 German.
Suresh recalled Fairstreet business head Saurav Pandey questioning TOMCOM officials in front of protesting candidates about why they had been told A2 was enough, when Fairstreet had communicated that B1 or B2 would be required. Avinash recalled this incident as well.
Some did not sign any further document, pointing to the gap between what they had been told, the poster and the admission letter. Four or five demanded full refunds and compensation and wrote to TOMCOM Managing Director A Nirmala Kanthi Wesley and General Manager Naga Bharathi about what they called “TOMCOM’s fault.”
Suresh said that in a meeting with a few candidates, Naga Bharathi verbally acknowledged a discrepancy in how the language requirement had been communicated and promised action and access to future opportunities.
Back to the classroom at 35
Learning German was hard for many candidates, several of whom had not studied in more than a decade, Suresh and Naresh said. Suresh finished his Intermediate around 2008; Naresh and Avinash ended their schooling at Class 10. They and others had quit jobs and left their families to live in a hostel in Hyderabad and learn a new language.
“We trusted the government and imagined the programme to be serious, as they conducted three screening rounds to shortlist us,” Suresh said.
“We gained nothing, but lost a lot,” Naresh said.
Suresh described the food at the NAC hostel as “bad” and said it came with insects. “When we raised a complaint about the quality of food, we were asked to adjust. We survived all of it with a hope for a better future,” he said. Batch 3 candidates of the Ausbildung programme, who also trained at NAC, raised similar complaints about food and lodging.
Complaints, a Government Whip and a partial refund
Four of the candidates took their case to the Prajavani grievance programme at the Jagtial Collectorate, and to Aadi Srinivas, Government Whip in the Telangana Assembly and MLA for Vemulawada. In their letter to Srinivas, they said they had been “duped.”
“We placed trust in a government programme and have been cheated. We left our jobs expecting a better life. But TOMCOM, run by the government, is resorting to cheating, even more than (private) agents,” they wrote.
Suresh said Srinivas contacted TOMCOM officials and was promised action, but the matter was not resolved.
The four or five who wanted out received partial refunds, the candidates said, but only after months of visits to TOMCOM’s office at ITI Mallepally.
“I paid about Rs 1.58 lakh and got close to Rs 60,000 back as a refund, after making rounds around ITI Mallepally for months,” Suresh said.
After Suresh and Naresh left, they said TOMCOM held “job interviews” for openings in Romania as an alternative, but candidates were later told they had not received visas. Both of them doubt the interviews were “genuine,” citing inconsistencies and a lack of transparency in what TOMCOM told them.
The three candidates say they lost more time and money looking for work after leaving. To their knowledge, no one has gone to Germany through the bus-driver programme, though they do not know whether the others kept training or moved to other TOMCOM programmes.
“What did we gain out of it?” Suresh asked.
Avinash said he continued in the course beyond the dropping out of his batchmates but alleged he was told B1 would be an internal exam first. Later, the goalpost moved to a mandatory OSD B1 exam. “I demanded a refund at this juncture,” he added.
No word from TOMCOM
On September 16, Siasat.com sought programme data and responses to the candidates’ allegations from Nirmala Kanthi Wesley, Naga Bharathi and Fairstreet.
Saurav Pandey said Fairstreet had played a limited role in the wider initiative and had “diligently fulfilled its obligations” under its memorandum of understanding (MoU) with TOMCOM. Citing confidentiality, he said it could not comment further without TOMCOM’s written consent and referred Siasat.com to TOMCOM.
Sravani Talasila referred queries to Naga Bharathi, who said responses were under review in the Managing Director’s office. None had arrived by the time this report was published.
Two Right to Information (RTI) applications on both programmes, filed in August, remain unanswered past their 30-day deadlines, as do the first appeals that followed.
(This is part 2 of a two-part series on the alleged scam in TOMCOM. Part 1 covered TOMCOM’s Ausbildung programmes for Germany)
SOURCE : SIASAT
