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Money-driven learning
Form six student Coey Lai Ka-yee
had also worked at the centre as a
promoter but did not take any of its
courses. She said the more students one
could refer, the more commission one
would get.
"If you can persuade two students to enrol on the courses, you'll get the commission of around a thousand for each student. From the third student onwards, you can get HK$1,800 each," said the ex-promotor.
"Meanwhile, you can become a team
leader and have an extra HK$800
commission from each deal your team
member did," she said.
Another former promotor who identified himself only as Rem, 17, questioned how the centre could remain financially viable after paying such a big amount of commission to the promoters.
"Sometimes, my colleagues and I felt a bit afraid of earning such quick money," said Rem, who quitted the job in February after having worked there for about half a year.
"Although I don't think I'm cheating people or breaking the law – as there're real courses run for the students, I think the centre is just working on the grey area," he said. "I really want to find some decent jobs and my family wants me to work seriously."
Another ex-promoter of the Genesis
Education Centre, Edmund Leung, also
questioned whether the institute could
maintain the quality of the courses
under such commission system.
"You can imagine, with around
HK$1,800 offered to promoters as
commission, and HK$800 for the team
leader, there'll definitely be few resources
allocated to the courses," said Mr Leung
who studies information engineering at
the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Bry an Ha Kwok-fung, assistant secretary for education and manpower, said while it was lawful to recruit promotional staff to advertise the reimbursable courses for the CEF, using financial inducements to attract students to enrol on the courses was a violation of the law.
"We'll investigate the case if we receive information about the malpractice of the advertising or recruitment strategies," Mr Ha said. But he said the bureau had not received any public complaints of this type so far.
Coey Lai and Edmund Leung tell Varsity about the institute's commission system.