After recently reporting on the exploitation of Latvian workers in Swedish forests, another case has come to light of similar practices in sub-contracting. This time it is in the Czech Republic, where workers originating from Vietnam have been overworked and cheated of their rights and of their money.

A recently publshed article in the English language Prague Post highlighted this practice: click here

It reported that a Vietnamese worker whose real name was kept secret for fear of violent recriminations or deportation, was one of several hundred workers employed to work in Czech forests. He said he has been waiting 18 months to receive three months' salary from a private employer that was contracted to work on land overseen by the state-owned firm Lesy ČR.

He is just one of the many that Petra Kutálková, a spokeswoman with the anti-human trafficking group La Strada, said make up the country's "most extensive known-case regarding labor exploitation and human trafficking for reasons other than prostitution."
She went on to call the case "the essence of human trafficking."

This man was among the several hundred Vietnamese who in March 2009 were employed by Affumicata a.s., a Prague-based firm. In a series of advertisements, foreign workers were promised between 10,000 and 12,000 Kč per month for their labor, with the possibility of increased salaries for the best workers. The reality was very different.

For more on this story and others concerning migrant workers, see also BWI connect, at: http://connect.bwint.org/