Filenews 18 April 2021 - by Marias Dimitriou
The miserable working and living conditions for foreign immigrants in Cyprus, particularly in the agri-food sector, are certainly not a current phenomenon.
In recent years I have been journalistically dealing with a number of related cases, one of which concerns Pham Van Chi from Haiphong, Vietnam. He had come to the island in March 2010 when he was 22 years old with the dream of working to help his poor family and in the summer of 2011 he was identified by the Police Anti-Trafficking Office as a victim of labour trafficking, after being left homeless, penniless and physically crippled, following an electric shock at his workplace in July 2010.
In 2014 he desperately asked to leave Cyprus without getting a cent for compensation. Intense was his mental injury from the barbaric cruelty of his employers, who had him work endless hours every day, without pay. Pham Van Chi was also a victim of the indifference, inaction and lack of public services that failed to protect him after the terrible accident and to bring to the Court the employers who broke the law.
"Please help me to go back to my native Vietnam! Cyprus has been the greatest curse in my life...", he told me when I met him and interviewed him in March 2014. Among other things, the young Vietnamese man told me: "For the last year I have been living in houses of acquaintances in various parts of Cyprus, because I have no money, no house, and no one has helped me, except some non-governmental organisations (such as THE CASA and Cyprus Stop Trafficking) and very few people of good will. I arrived in Cyprus in March 2010 on a legal visa to work in a livestock unit near Larnaca. My job was to take care of and milk the animals. My work started at 4 - 5 in the morning and ended at 9 - 10 at night, with a two-and-a-half hour break from 12m to 2.30pm. So I worked 14-15 hours. They gave me expired food, and they beat me three or four times. As with all the other farm workers, I was told they would cut me 50 euros from my supposed salary for my food costs. But they never paid me for my work there. After three weeks of work, I asked my employer to tell me the address of the farm to give it to my girlfriend (my compatriot) who was working at the time as a domestic helper in Nicosia. Instead, my employer beat me and threw me in the street. With nowhere to go, I stayed there for two weeks."
"My employer took me back for another three weeks of hard work and frequent beatings, without paying me a cent and in a desperate attempt to ask for help, I cut my wrists," Pham Chi continued. She came and picked me up from the farm and took me to her house in Nicosia, where I stayed for two and a half months, until I found another job. It was another farm where they wouldn't even give us food - all the workers only gave milk and that was our only food for the whole day. I stayed there only for one day, which of course I did not get paid and I returned to the Vietnamese middleman, where I stayed for another 15 days. In July 2010 I got a job in a village near the town of Paphos to clean the orchard and collect the fruit. One day my employer gave me a long metal rod to reach the top of the trees. As I was using it, she touched power lines, I suddenly felt a shock and was paralyzed.
I fell out of the tree and lost consciousness. When I came to, I was lying under the tree and i was in pain all over my body. I realized that my right hand was burned and that three of my fingers were missing – the whole small and the middle finger and part of the middle finger. Burned was part of my left hand like both my legs. I realized I was electrocuted, collapsed and passed out. I woke up in paphos hospital where I was hospitalized. No one called the police to report the incident. My employer then transferred me to a private clinic, where they cleaned my wounds and put bandages on me. The doctor said the burns were severe and I had to be taken to a hospital and my employer took me to the hospital in Nicosia, where I remained for two months.
They gave me several surgeries and placed skin grafts on both my hands. The wounds healed temporarily, but I lost three fingers in my right hand and I feel pain in the places where they were cut off. Permanently injured are my left arm and legs, so I don't have the same ability to work as before. My employer told me not to report the case to the police, and he promised me he'd pay me back. I didn't mention anything to the police, but he didn't keep his promise. I found myself without money, without clothes and I was lucky that my girlfriend supported me in Nicosia financially, so that I could buy food and medicine. I was receiving an allowance from Social Welfare Services and while I was waiting for my injury case and my application for compensation from my employer to be presented to the Court, I was informed in July 2012 that it had been closed due to lack of evidence, since the police went to the farm two years after the accident... I was left without money and unable to work and was finally arrested by the police in May 2013 with intent to deport me and even beat me when I refused. I was fired later and in December 2013 I learned that my mother is very sick and I decided to go back to Vietnam, because I no longer hope that the conditions of my life in Cyprus will improve...".
Change the policy for foreign workers in agriculture - livestock farming
"Public health in Cyprus cannot be guaranteed while the population of migrants, asylum seekers and foreign refugees is ignored in state planning and support measures," the executive director of the non-governmental human rights advocacy organisation Movement for Equality, Support, Anti-Racism (CASA), Dosos Polykarpou, told us, adding that "society pays the price of their indifference and obsolescence by the state". He went on to talk about "miserable working conditions for foreign workers in the agri-food sector. The collective agreement on modern slavery in agri-farming, which has been in force since 2014 and promoted by the Ministry of Labour, must be abolished. The contract, signed by the government, agricultural organisations and guilds, was in fact intended to serve Cypriot employers, while sacrificing the rights of workers in the agri-food sector, the vast majority of whom are immigrants and immigrants. It establishes a regime of modern slavery, since the unclean salary for six days' work is set at 455 euros, while contributions to the Social Insurance Fund are compulsorily cut off from their salary without having any access to the public health system. The contract also unlawfully obliges employees to be members of one of the guilds and the employer to deduct from their salary and to pay the guilds their assistance, whereas in most cases the employees have no contact with the guild to which they are obliged to belong. Many workers in the agri-food sector are forced to work in miserable working conditions and much more than 80 hours a fortnight, including on Sundays and public holidays. In particular, being in the country with temporary residence status, having limited opportunities to change employers, usually staying in their workplaces combined with inadequate inspections in workplaces by competent officials, leading to flagrant violations of their rights and creating the conditions for trafficking in human beings.".
D. Polykarpou also stated that "the employment policy of third-country nationals in the agricultural and livestock sector established by the Ministry of the Interior since April 2019 and which has increased dependency and exploitation, rather than improving working conditions and rights", should be changed. Under the new policy – he added – it is forbidden to change the employment sector for third-country nationals from agriculture and livestock farming to other sectors of the economy, it is forbidden to apply for asylum, while Egypt, a country with blatant human rights violations, has been established as a safe country so that Egyptian workers cannot apply for asylum and escape slavery."
