DWP Removes Jobs Advertised Only In Polish On DirectGov Jobsite

DWP Removes Jobs Advertised In Polish From DirectGov Site

The Department of Work and Pensions has taken down a number of job vacancies on the government website after it emerged they were written entirely in Polish.

The labouring roles which were advertised in London list duties which translate as "working on roofs, scraping and demolition of buildings."

At the end of one of the adverts it says: "If you do not talk in Polish, please send an email, do not call," although as the advert is in Polish it is unclear how a non-Polish speaker would be able to do this.

The DWP told the Huffington Post UK jobs are only supposed to be posted in English or Welsh, and this is why the Polish adverts had been taken down.

An advert on the website

Jark Agency, which was advertising the position, told the Huffington Post UK that the adverts were put up in both English and Polish to get as many candidates as possible. However a search of the jobsite showed that no similar job in the same area was being advertised in English by that recruitment agency.

The agency said the job had been posted in Polish by mistake and the role was a temporary one that was now finished anyway.

A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: "Universal Jobmatch is highly successful with over 1.5 million jobseekers and 420,000 employers already using the brand new service.

"We carry out checks on employers to ensure that they are legitimate, but should an inappropriate job be posted, we take immediate steps to withdraw their advent, and if necessary, ban them from using the site."

Earlier the grandmother of a man looking for work who had stumbled across a similar advert by mistake told the Daily Mail how unfair she felt such adverts were.

The 64-year-old woman from Dagenham, Essex, who did not wish to be named, said: "My grandson was on my computer and saw there was a labourer job going, but he didn't have a clue what it said because it was in Polish.

"A job like that should be open to everyone not just those who can speak Polish."

Another of the ads on the website

A recent census showed that Polish is the second most spoken language in the UK. More than half a million emigrated here from Poland after immigration restrictions were relaxed and there is a large Polish community in the UK.

Integration between Polish and English speakers has become so prevalent that 'Poglish' or Ponglish has been created, a mixture of the two.

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