LONDON: More than 200 Indonesian fruit pickers have sought help from their country’s embassy in London since July after paying huge debts to travel to the UK for work, the mission said on Friday.
The real number of Indonesians struggling in the industry was likely much higher, it said, adding that more than 1,450 of them were sent this year to work on six-month seasonal worker visas by a company called AG Recruitment .
consular officer told The Guardian newspaper that initially people “started coming to us with problems about targets on fields.”
But the official said: “Currently, most people are contacting us because there is no more work in the fields. They try to get transferred, but the AG tells them there is no other work.
One employee told The Guardian that he had borrowed £4,650 ($5,700) in Java to pay for an agent to take him to the UK, but his job at Castleton Farm in Scotland paid only £200 a week. He was still owed £1,700 when he was sacked after just two months.
Ross Mitchell, managing director of Castleton Fruit Ltd, said the farm had employed 106 Indonesian workers this year, of whom 70 were still on site, working an average of less than 42 hours per week, with an average weekly gross wage of around £100,000. 450, excluding costs like accommodation.
He said he was “very concerned” about “payments demanded by third-party agents” and that the company “relyed on approved agents to conduct due diligence to ensure that employees were not paying exorbitant fees”. “
“We expected the relevant bodies to deal with this issue,” he told The Guardian.
An investigation by the paper in August revealed that Indonesian workers were regularly taking loans of up to £5,000 to work in the UK once fruit had been picked.
The Guardian said AG Recruitment, which has no presence in Indonesia, used Jakarta-based Al Zubara Manpower to source workers, which in turn used third-party brokers who charged potential workers high fees .
AG Recruitment denied knowledge of any wrongdoing or practice, but has since been investigated by the UK government agency Gangmasters and Labor Abuse Authority.
A GLAA spokesperson told The Guardian: “Wherever there are allegations of labor exploitation, we will investigate and take appropriate action if our licensing standards are not being fully adhered to … scheme operators are committed to their responsibilities towards workers fully aware of.”
AG director Douglas Ames said: “Workers should never have to pay fees to anyone to get a job in the UK; This is UK law. However, unfortunately this is not the law in all countries from which we have historically recruited, so we are actively working to educate citizens overseas that they do not need to apply for a job in the UK or elsewhere. Shouldn’t even have to pay a fee.
Al Zubara’s director Yulia Gueyni said: “We send workers based on the AG’s request. We charge based on the placement agreement signed by the employees only.
He said: “It is not our responsibility (to check workers’ loans) because we do not encourage them to take loans. They are old enough and they should be responsible enough to understand the consequences of loans.”
Castleton Farms supplies fruit to some of the UK’s biggest supermarket brands. In a statement, the British Retail Consortium said the supermarkets were “concerned by these allegations and are conducting an immediate investigation.”