Warning!

phiss

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If you are looking for teaching work in Indonesia, especially in Medan, North Sumatera, please be very wary of a school known as Synergy (SiTC), formerly known as Learning Minds. Make sure a work permit has been obtained for you BEFORE you enter Indonesia. Also make sure that a full contract has been drawn up, with an official stamp on it and signed by the owner of the school. A copy pf this should be sent to you for your perusal and acceptance, or not. Again insist on having a copy of this BEFORE you arrive in Indonesia. You can sign the official stamped copy when you arrive. If you accept a job offer based on an 'unsigned' copy, you may find it difficult to obtain a 'signed, stamped original' after your arrival.

This company also trades under the name IBLA, which covers its examining arm for tests such as the Cambridge Suite and OET and other academic examinations. If you accept work as a Speaking Test Examiner, please be aware that payments to you may be delayed for up to 6 months and sometimes you will have to fight hard to obtain final payments. This despite the fact that authorities such as Cambridge University and OET, etc, always pay the school owners promptly, usually between four to six weeks after the examinations.

If you would like more information on the above, or have any outstanding matters relating to this school, please send me a Personal Message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

The above advice applies to any other company that offers you work in Indonesia. Owners will try to convince you otherwise, but it is illegal to work in Indonesia without a work permit, even for a short period of time. If you are caught, you will probably end up in prison, then be deported and blacklisted. Do not expect support from the school itself. It will quickly distance itself from you and, invariably, find a way of protecting themselves from prosecution.
 
Here is a note that had been written about that same company on another website together with my response. The original message (in quotes) appeared on Dave's ESL Cafe in 2015 but was quickly removed:


Hi, I wanted to write a short review of Synergy (sitc) Medan at which two persons I knew worked recently. Hopefully this review may offer some guidance to those who like them had seen their ad for teachers.

Overall the impressions were very negative.

The building is situated in a very congested area of a Chinese commercial district, there is little parking, traffic is sometimes stalled for hours making it actually impossible to get to or from the institute.

On first arriving the native teachers were given only a vague and humming and hawing idea of when they should start teaching or what they would be doing, despite having had clear start dates and job descriptions in earlier email and skype conversations.

One teacher found his own accommodation while the other had a house in a decent complex rented for her -- this detail will become important later, see below...

The institute had about a dozen classrooms, three of them have some form of smart board, the place is set up in the style of having glass walls as is popular these days. The air conditioning is adequate in most of the classrooms although there is none elsewhere in the building except a large bull-pen office and boss and manager offices on the top floor....

As it turned out, and contrary to what the teachers had been told before arriving, half or more of the teaching was at schools and a university around the city of Medan. The result of this was having to do wildly split-shifts at two, three or even four different locations in a day, sometimes starting at 7 AM and finishing at 9 PM; not a very agreeable set up for the foreign teachers, especially the one who didn't have any mode of transport of her own! Related to this, the communication and planning was abysmal so that a native teacher would often get to a school and find it closed. Conditions at the schools ranged from modern and air conditioned to sweltering, dilapidated and in a state of endless power outage.

There was little curriculum. The native teachers were basically expected to produce the material and syllabus for the courses. ... the native teachers were expected to teach mostly grammar at the institute ... there were more than once scheduling mix-ups so classes had no teachers.

There turned out to be a curious teachers charter that included details like: if any student has their cell phone in class it should be confiscated and given to the manager, only one student of any gender may go to the toilet at a time, students must leave their phone in the class when going to the toilet, and a myriad of rules and supposed forms to be filled out, none of which seem to have existed. There was a second version of the charter later even more tyrannical and eccentric than the first. The native teachers declined to sign either.

One was not required to be at the institute for any prep time, but since the shifts were inevitable highly split the teachers were generally there for long hours.

Pay was off the first month, and the second month it was late. Not a good sign of course. From there the housing allowance installments were paid about 5 months late and the native teacher had to request it again and again.

Only a small part of the health allowance was ever paid despite promises week after week.

By this time one of the native teachers had had enough and gave her 30 days notice. Then, rather than honoring that, [the] owner evicted her from the house he'd put her in, giving her 24 hours notice, and [supposedly] stiffed her on the month's salary. Next, he [supposedly] closed the bank account he had made for her in the office boy's name and [supposedly] basically stole here savings amounting to 15 Jt; when she realized she went to the institute to try to get the money and [supposedly] was locked outside the building...


...the other native teacher started making other plans. Amusingly, the owner then sent this other native teacher an email telling him that his students were doing badly on their academic tests and he was going to be put on some sort of probation: obviously the set up to being fired just before the end of contract bonus was due. An unlikely story since this native teacher had only seen the academic students randomly and rarely. ...the teacher having anticipated this, and inlight of what had happened to his co-worker, immediately quit without notice and moved onto other things

... the experiences reported of two native teachers hired to work at Synergy (sitc) in Medan in 2015.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

MY RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE:


The above, from 'tomasturtle', originally appeared on Dave's ESL Cafe but was quickly removed after the boss of Synergy threatened Dave with withdrawing any future advertising, etc. He didn't seem too concerned about what was being said, 90% of which was, in fact, true, but how it would affect his bottom line. He did the same thing with a previous complaint posted by another ex-employee with a similar complaint. I don't know whether he actually got these two people banned from Dave's, but he certainly tried. I know all this because I still have copies of his letters on my computer, together with copies of the original messages from the ex-employees. He used to send me copies of these and then gloat over how clever he had been.

His pattern is always the same: He suddenly decides that someone is of no further use to him. It took him 7 years to decide this about me! Then he 'ghosts them' - he either acts as though they are completely invisible or responds to any approach by them with monosyllabic responses and then turns his back on them and walks away. This behaviour carried out over a period of months becomes very emotionally draining, especially as the person involved usually has no idea what they have done wrong to merit this 'punishment'. Actually, in most cases, they hadn't done anything wrong! This behaviour drove one person almost to the edge of a nervous breakdown before he finally left at the end of his contract.

Following this psychological abuse, this employer then finds a way to cheat people out of the money due to them. I know of at least four people that this has happened to, including myself. In my case, the amount involved amounted to approximately IDR 60 million. This included final month's salary, end of contract bonus (yes, I finished my contract, I was not fired), amounts due for Cambridge and OET speaking tests, money in lieu of paid holidays not taken, etc.

I think we have all resigned ourselves to the fact that we will never see our money and have moved on with our lives. But attention has to be drawn to this person's unacceptable behaviour, in an attempt to warn others away from him.


 

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