Indian workers 'exploited' in London

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, DEC. 12. A group of Indian workers, brought here to work on construction of a temple, has won a 100,000-pound compensation package after it was found that they were being exploited by their employers, Shrico Limited, a subsidiary of a Hindu charity run by a local businessman, Shri Vallabh Nidhi.

The company agreed to pay up after Britain's inland revenue agency threatened to prosecute it for not paying the minimum wage to its workers, and for treating them virtually like ``slave'' labour. The Department for Employment and Education said the work permits were issued on the condition that the company would comply with regulations relating to minimum wages and working conditions.

The workers, who were brought here from Rajasthan to work on what is being billed as the biggest temple in the U.K., were paid 30 pence an hour and housed in squalid conditions. The minimum national wage in Britain is close to four pounds an hour and even now the individual compensation is said to work out to a ``fraction'' of their actual entitlement taking into account

housing and other facilities.

There are about a dozen workers, mostly from villages around Dungarpur, and they have been here since April 1999 often slogging 12 hours a day which is regarded here as a violation of labour laws. When they were hired, they were promised a monthly salary of 200 pounds a month- twice the money they were earning in India- but soon they discovered they had been duped.They have alleged that their passports were taken away and they were kept like ``prisoners.'' They lived in cramped prefabricated huts on the building in ``primitive'' conditions, and after work the site was locked with the workers inside, they have alleged.

The workers were hired to carve figurines and stones to be put on the Shri Sanatan Temple being constructed in Wembley, north London. Mr. George Brumwell, general secretary of the Union of Construction, Allied Tades and Technicians which took up their case, said: ``We believed it is the tip of the iceberg in Britain's construction industry.''

The case had highlighted the plight of foreign workers, he said, pointing out that some years ago the union found a group of Polish carpenters being exploited in a similar fashion. There is a fear that the Government's decision to relax rules for work permits for certain categories of workers could lead to similar situations unless the employers were forced to comply with regulations.

A spokesman for Shrico Limited said the workers were being paid in ``kind.'' Denying that there had been any deliberate exploitation, he said it was all a ``misunderstanding.''

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Section  : International
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