Leisure Clothing workers preferred illegal escape to reporting company to police

Vietnamese workers at Bulebel textile factory Leisure Clothing, have told a court that they had been afraid of losing a €2,000 deposit they had paid a Vietnamese agent to get them the job in Malta and that they preferred the risk of using fake documents to escape Malta than that of reporting the company’s abusive conditions to the police.

Two more Vietnamese workers have testified in the compilation of evidence against the two Chinese men who run the Chinese-owned factory.

Managing director Han Bin, 46, from San Gwann and marketing director Jia Liu, 31, from Birzebbuga, are charged with human trafficking together with a plethora of employment law violations over the conditions endured by the factory’s Chinese and Vietnamese workers.

They are also charged with misappropriating employees’ wages, failing to pay the employees their wages, overtime and allowances and failing to comply with employment conditions.

Mr Tran Nang Do and Ms Thi Thu Tran testified today. Ms Tran had been arrested in July 2014, together with two co-nationals, attempting to board a catamaran to Sicily with false Italian papers. Their arrest, and their subsequent explanation, had sparked the police investigation and subsequent arrests of the company directors.

Under cross-examination by lawyer Edward Gatt, Ms Tran denied coming to Malta with the ulterior motive of moving on to Germany. She had come to Malta with the sole purpose of working here and sending money back to her family in Vietnam, she said.

“I had no intention of going to another country. But the reality was very different from what I had been told to expect. I couldn’t take it any more so I had to leave.”

“When I was sick, I was not allowed to see the doctor right away. When I arrived here, the company seized my passport.”

Both Tran and Do claimed to have only received €150 every two months. Tran, however told the court that she spent her free time “shopping and going out with friends.”

Tran said the agent had told her family to pass on the message to her that if she complained, the agency would report her to the Vietnamese labour department and she would be fined.

She could not provide the court with the identity of the person who had provided her with the fake documents, saying only that it was “a white man” who had approached her while she had been out for a stroll near the factory. She insisted that he had not been put in contact with her by anyone else.

“So you want us to believe that you just bumped into this man and started chatting with him about buying false documents? You were so afraid to speak to the police but had no problem speaking to a man you don’t know,” remarked defence counsel Edward Gatt.

Mr Do explained that he was terrified of being sent back to Vietnam, as he would not have enough money to repay the amounts owed to the agency who sent him here.

Gatt asked whether, aside from the debts in Vietnam, there was another cause for worry. “If the company sends me back to Vietnam it means that I break the contract and there is a penalty to pay. If I don’t have money, I will be sent to prison.”

Asked whether the penalty was in the contract, the witness said that he was told about it at the airport by the agency. His employers had also told him that he would be sent back.

Gatt asked what he would do with his free time. He had mentioned soccer, the lawyer suggested. “On my day off I had to do the toilets over there. I felt I was treated unfairly compared to the other Chinese workers there.”

Police Inspector Joseph Busuttil is leading the prosecution. Lawyers Edward Gatt and Pio Valletta are defence counsel to the company directors. Lawyers Karl Briffa, Katrine Camilleri and Michael Camilleri are appearing parte civile for the workers.