Private firm subcontracted to work on forests 'human trafficking' case
Posted: March 9, 2011By Ryan Scott - For the Post
Courtesy Photo. A German TV crew interviews Mr. Hung.
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A group of foreign workers hired by a private firm to work in state-owned forests say they were never paid for their work in a case some human rights groups are equating to modern-day slavery.
Mr. Hung, a Vietnamese worker whose real name is kept secret for fear of violent recriminations or deportation, was one of several hundred workers employed to do manual labor 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."
Mr. Hung 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.
Several attempts to reach the present Affumicata management at their listed phone number - a mobile phone - were unsuccessful as the phone has been disconnected.
After an information session, where the workers were given safety training, they allegedly began working 10-hour days. Six people, Mr. Hung said, were sent to work in Tišice, on the outskirts of Prague.
Mr. Hung was able to show The Prague Post video recordings of the team at work. One task was to sort downed trees by size; another was to dig in the ground to prepare it for planting using only a garden hoe. In another recording, the sound of the hoe striking rock can be heard.
After the first month, the workers were paid. But by April 2009, salaries were being delayed, after which the workers confronted Affumicata management. Initially, incremental parts of the salaries were given, before Affumicata stopped paying at all, Mr. Hung said.
"They were afraid that if they gave us the money, we would run away," he added.
In place of money, Affumicata began occasionally giving workers food, but even this was irregular, according to Mr. Hung. To supplement infrequent meals, the workers fried flour or foraged the forest for food. Once the gas was switched off in their shared apartments at the end of May, the workers had to leave. Hung and his co-workers believe Affumicata stopped paying the bills.
A spokesman for Lesy ČR, a state-owned firm that tends the country's forests, says they have no agreement with Affumicata, though he did concede one of Lesy's subcontractors may have further subcontracted work.
"The law on public tenders does not allow us to dictate employment matters for contracted partners," Lesy ČR spokesman Zbyněk Bobynek said.
The Prague Post requested Bobynek name the firm Lesy had contracted to work on forests in the region to which Mr. Hung referred. After agreeing to provide that information, Bobynek later claimed that the files containing the information were on a computer that was no longer accessible as it was "under repair."
"All we want to and can say we said," Bobynek then said.
Translator Nguyen Kim Phung was present at the same informational meeting Mr. Hung attended. He translated management directives from Czech into Vietnamese. He says he became aware of the harsh conditions only after friends complained of not being paid. Nguyen says he too had to approach Affumicata for his own late wages.
In addition, Nguyen said a later review of the work contracts found that many said the company was providing education services, not hiring workers for employment. The workers were given and signed the agreements on the way to work sites or even on the work sites themselves, he said. Some of the contracts even required workers to pay Affumicata for providing education, rather than for the company to compensate them for their labor.
"Affumicata abused the goodwill of many Vietnamese people - and Czechs too," Nguyen said.
David Mrkos, a former chairman of Affumicata, has a different version of events.
"The Vietnamese were working as part of a re-qualification course," he said, while maintaining that they knew this in advance.
As for the unpaid wages, he claims that the men did very little work and were more than compensated for their efforts with food.
When the Vietnamese workers started leaving because of the lack of pay, Affumicata hired workers from other countries like Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. One group of Romanian workers employed in the spring of 2010 were driven back to Romania after several months without pay, said Marek Čaněk, a political scientist at Charles University specializing in labor migration.
Bedřich Vagner, owner of the Zlatý Lev hotel in Kutná Hora, which provided accommodation for these men "for several months," said Affumicata still owes him 400,000 Kč.
Allegations have surfaced about a second group of Romanian workers who were allegedly mistreated in autumn 2010, this time employed by the firm Wood Servis Praha s.r.s. - a firm without a listed phone number that despite its name is registered at a Brno address. The director of both Wood Servis Praha and Affumicata is Jindřich Martinák.
Mrkos denied any knowledge of the Romanian workers and the unpaid hotel bills. Martinák could not be reached for comment.
According to Matouš Jíra, a lawyer representing some of the men who are seeking back-wages in this case, this second group of Romanian workers was abandoned in the forests of south Bohemia. They walked to Tábor, about 80 kilometers south of Prague. There, they were arrested by local police and transported to Prague, where Jíra met them in November 2010.
"Affumicata did not fulfill any of their obligations: in the matters of wages for the workers, paying for the food or the accommodation," said Jíra, who is working with another lawyer, Štěpánka Miková, on the case.
Jíra said they filed a criminal complaint against Affumicata in summer 2010, on which he is still waiting for action. Thus far, he said, police have questioned only one of the workers.
The State Police did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.
Jíra added that the most important information for pursuing these lost wages is the information that shows were the money trail leads, saying this is information only the police can uncover. So far, Jíra said, they either haven't or are unwilling to do so.
"[The success of this case] depends on who was paid by the state, that is by Lesy ČR, the state-owned company who received this money for work in the forest," Jíra said. "We shall track the path of money. Where that ends, we can ask them to pay what is owed."
- Filip Šenk contributed to this report.
Ryan Scott can be reached at features@praguepost.comSource: The Prague Post
The Prague Post - News - Foreign workers exploited on state land
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