Indonesia to investigate claims fruit pickers charged thousands to work in Kent

theguardian.com:

A presidential taskforce in Indonesia is investigating the recruitment of fruit pickers who say they took on debts of up to £5,000 to secure jobs in Kent.

The Guardian revealed that Indonesian labourers harvesting berries on a farm that supplies Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco had reported facing thousands of pounds in charges to unlicensed brokers in Bali to get work for a single season in the UK.

One worker told the Guardian how he staked his family home in Bali as surety on the debt and feared losing it. Migrant rights experts said the potential to be trapped in debt bondage put workers at risk of essentially forced labour.

Hundreds of Indonesian farm workers were recruited to work in farms across Britain this summer on seasonal worker visas, the immigration route created to tackle a shortage of farm workers after Brexit.

The Indonesia Migrant Workers Protection Bureau (BP2MI), a presidential taskforce, dispatched four officers to investigate brokers across multiple islands last week. They are understood to still be in the field.

The chair of BP2MI, Benny Rhamdani, said in a statement he was “disturbed” by the allegations of overcharging for jobs abroad and that it was “a very serious problem”.

Rhamdani added: “This practice is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. Overcharging is part of the crime of exploitation of workers.”

He said he was frustrated that no representative from the UK government had yet met them to help move on their investigations.

The British embassy in Jakarta told BP2MI it was up to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) to discuss it and they were arranging a first meeting with them this week.

A UK investigation by the GLAA into the recruitment process is ongoing. The