Slavery

Slavery in Britain today…

Somalatha arrived in Britain when she was 29 with a family for whom she had been working in Jordan. Her job was to be a maid. She had to work 16 to 18 hours a day, for which she was paid £200 a month. In the first two years, she was not given one day off. She was not allowed to eat with the family and had to wait for leftovers. If there were none, she was advised to eat onions and potatoes. If any food was missing, she was automatically blamed for it, or even punished. Her employer deliberately let her visa expire.

A group of Polish workers working in a chicken-packing factory near Exeter was recently discovered living in a house with no furniture. They were sleeping on bare mattresses and using an electric cooker with its wires stripped bare and pushed straight into the socket. Their gangmasters had threatened them with eviction and loss of two weeks' wages if they dared to tell anyone about their conditions.

The British government has been forced to act by events, passing a law against trafficking for forced labour after 23 Chinese workers lost their lives as they harvested cockles against a rising tide in Morecambe Bay in 2004. At the beginning of 2007 it ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, 2005.

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This girl who was trafficked from Albania into sexual exploitation is being helped by the local NGO the Hearth which set up the first shelter for trafficked Albanian girls and women in 2001.
Credit: Sarah Williams/Anti-Slavery International