What's going on with Affinity and Kirsten?

A few weeks back I accompanied my girlfriend to submit the documents being required to her by Kirsten Recruitment for her application to study in the United Kingdom thru the Affinity Training Ltd. She also paid a "commitment" fee that amounts to hundreds of dollars in order for her to complete her CV and be sent to UK for possible employers. She will be studying, and at the same time working, in the UK for about two years. She is a nurse and will be taking National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) levels 3-4 in Health and Social Care. Actually there are hundreds of nurses and caregivers from the Philippines that are in UK right now and taking up their NVQs. This is actually a good program; not only that a student gets paid but he/she will also earn an international qualification related to his/her degree. Nice.

However, just last week, a rather bad news had came out. The major NVQ training provider, Affinity Training Ltd, went bankrupt! News from UK about this had reached all 'corners' of the Philippines. Here is a quote of an article published over the internet:

• "Major NVQ training provider, Affinity Training Limited, has been put into administration after going bust.
  
  Hundreds of international students, many recruited from the Philippines, will lose fees paid in advance for NVQ training in Health and Social Care."

You can click here to check it out.

Kirsten Recruitment claimed that they had already established a tie-up with another institution but still information regarding it was not disseminated. A lot of applicants are still waiting.

The bad thing about this is that not only my girlfriend was affected but also her brother (who is also a nurse) and her brother's friends. And the worse thing? A lot of Filipinos are affected!