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When Maya, head of the India office, heard about the opportunity to work as a care assistant in Britain, she jumped at the chance to earn money and send cash home, but she is now heavily in debt and says she and her colleagues have been “treated like slaves. “
The mother-of-two is one of tens of thousands of foreign carers who have arrived in Britain as part of an initiative introduced in 2022 to tackle severe shortages in the country’s fragile welfare system.
But reports of exploitation have skyrocketed since the scheme was introduced, with one migration expert describing the care sector as “a veritable Wild West”.
Maya and her carers told Context they ended up working long hours for little money after paying thousands of pounds to an agent in India to get a job at a care company in northern England.
They said the climate of concern terrified them as they spoke out at the time they were fired, putting them in danger of deportation because their visas were tied to their jobs.
“We have the idea of going back to India, but how can we do it with so much debt?We are trapped,” said Maya, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.
“I pledge my space to the bank to get the loan to come here. We also rented out our space so we wouldn’t have anywhere else to go back to. And all our relatives lent us cash to come here.
Jane Townson, executive leader of the Homecare Association, which represents home care providers, said the industry is heavily involved with unethical operators, adding that there were “shameful and outrageous” stories of other people being scammed out of massive sums or housed in “cockroach-infested rooms, slums. “
In some cases, other people were promised a job in Britain, only to find that there were none when they arrived. Others were fired after their employers went bankrupt or lost their contracts.
“They have to rely on food banks and charities,” Townson added. “Many are in debt bondage. They sold everything to come here.
In reaction to a data request, the Gangmasters
Almost all of them were cases of slavery.
Figures being finalised through the anti-slavery charity Unseen, which runs the anti-slavery helpline in the UK, paint an even bleaker picture.
Cases of popular slavery in the care sector reported to the helpline last year are estimated to have potentially affected at least 800 victims, up from just 63 in 2021, before the visa directive was introduced.
But public service union UNISON said the figures were just the tip of the iceberg, as many carers don’t report abuse for fear of deportation or don’t know where to look for help.
“A lot of those employers are risking their opportunities,” said Gavin Edwards, UNISON’s social coverage.
“Dating strength is very uneven and that’s why some unscrupulous people can get away with it. “
He said the severe underfunding of the UK health sector and the prevalence of organisations whose main motivation was to make a profit rather than deliver quality care had created “a race to the bottom”.
Britain opened a new visa pathway for foreign staff in early 2022 to fill some 165,000 vacancies in the care sector as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and Britain’s exit from the European Union.
According to official data, some 140,000 people have since been granted visas, many of them from India, Zimbabwe and Nigeria.
Concerns about the plan prompted Britain’s independent immigration inspector to publish an inquiry last year into its effectiveness and whether labour sponsorship regulations protect carers from exploitation.
The reaction and the government’s are expected to be published in April.
Maya’s story began in April 2022 when she enlisted the help of an Indian agent named Rishin Stanley in Kochi to help her find a backer for the project.
He said he asked for invoices totaling more than 10,000 pounds ($12,850).
Former colleagues have told stories. Some paid even more.
When one of them asked about the maximum amount, the official replied that sponsorship is expensive.
But when the women arrived in Britain, they were shocked to realise that it was the employer who paid the sponsorship fee.
Companies hiring foreign staff will have to pay a licence, a certificate of sponsorship for each employee and other fees of up to £5,000 per employee. These prices cannot be passed on to employees.
The carers said they paid some of the money to the agent but were asked to transfer up to £5,000 to a UK bank account that they said belonged to Ease Healthcare, the company sponsoring them.
Deepa, another caregiver who also asked to use a pseudonym, said that the payment for accommodation and management fees, however, did not get any breakdown and she was only given accommodation for a few weeks.
The context showed the correspondence between Stanley and Ease Healthcare, founded in the town of Sheffield. The firm indicated that he worked for a corporation called IMTP.
But when Context contacted Stanley about the firm’s number, he said he had never helped anyone locate a task in Britain and that it was “misinformation. “
He said he hadn’t heard of Ease Healthcare or IMTP, even though he’s indexed as a regional representative at the company and IMTP is listed on his LinkedIn page.
IMTP chief executive Sasidharan Nambiar said the company arranges jobs for caregivers, but Stanley does it on the sidelines.
The women were hired through Ease Healthcare to work as home care aides, helping people with the elderly, disabled, and those with health issues at home.
The company supplies the local government and works with major national charities, according to its website.
A task offer letter, seen via Context, promised an annual salary of £20,480 for a 39-hour week, the minimum wage allowed for foreign carers in 2022 under government rules.
The letter from Ease Healthcare provided Stanley’s email address for questions.
Caregivers started their days at 7 a. m. and they finished late at night, leaving them little time to eat and sleep.
Although they didn’t paint constantly, they said they had to stay on call, waiting in cars for the next job.
They said they only got paid for appointments, which are usually home care but lasted 39 hours a week.
Caregivers said they didn’t have enough travel time between appointments, and yet if they were late, they didn’t get paid even though they were doing the work.
They had to log their hours through an app, but said they had changed.
Caregivers said schedules were replaced by overnight ones, which meant they couldn’t plan their days off.
“We all have knowledge and seek to move towards a better life,” Deepa said. “In India, we thought there was no exploitation or slavery in Britain. We thought Britain was because it had regulations and regulations. “
Ease Healthcare’s lead executive, Essie Manomano, denied the caregivers’ allegations and said no one underpaid, mistreated or threatened termination.
He said the company uses an outside accountant and software formula for rotations and appointments.
Manomano said the nature of the paintings meant schedules were unpredictable, but there was no need to be on call between appointments or paint on days off.
“Most of the data is true,” he said.
“People are free to leave. We don’t have anyone’s passport. We provide pastoral support.
Manomano said he did not know the Indian agent and did not respond to emailed follow-up questions related to the sponsorship deals.
Context first spoke with Maya, Deepa, and 3 caregivers in mid-2023.
Most of them came from Kerala.
They provided documents related to their employment at Ease Healthcare and their relationship with the agent, but asked Context to publish their stories until they discovered new sponsors — a lengthy process.
Care industry experts said foreign caregivers’ reliance on their sponsors for visas and employment — and on their references in case of replacing jobs — made it difficult to report.
Homecare’s Townson said some of the sector’s problems stemmed from broader systemic and investment issues.
“Councils are so cash-strapped that they’re cutting home care fees, and that’s fueling labor abuse,” she said.
In the past, the local government gave care companies flat-rate contracts to facilitate planning, but now they pay per appointment, which can replace them at short notice and vary from day to day.
“If you have security in the source of income, you can guarantee the security of the tasks, but right now no one needs to pay for care,” Townson said.
In some cases, care businesses have gone bankrupt, leaving staff unemployed and destitute.
Dozens of caregivers – many of them from the Philippines – were threatened with eviction last year when their employer in Cambridgeshire, England, went bankrupt.
Foreign carers are not eligible for the social coverage formula and only have 60 days to locate a new sponsor before having to leave the country.
Deepa, who now works at a care home in the south of England, said it had been incredibly tricky to find a new sponsor.
“Everybody asks for money. They see it as a business. They take advantage of people’s powerlessness,” he said.
The UK Home Office said it would crack down on abuse of the immigration formula and investigate cases where gigantic sums of money had been demanded from carers.
“We are committed to eliminating the exploitation of those working in the care sector, adding those who are taken to places where there is no employment or who are paid particularly less than required, putting staff at risk of destitution,” a spokesperson said. saying.
The government is this week introducing a new rule under which care providers can sponsor migrant staff if they are regulated through the Care Quality Commission, an independent watchdog.
But UNISON said this would not aggravate the disorders, as the Care Quality Commission was “hugely overwhelmed”.
Maya has now found a job at a care home in the city, but works up to 72 hours a week to pay off her £26,000 debts.
“I thought I would have a life here with opportunities, but I had to borrow again and again just to survive,” he said.
“I would never have come if I had so much trouble. “
This article was first published in Context, produced by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.