By Jean Christou

While Cyprus offers a degree of support and protection to victims of trafficking and forced labour (slavery), the island falls far short when it comes to the exploitation of foreign workers, a new report said.

Exploitation of workers is defined as extremely low wages and excessive working hours and days as compared to trafficking and slavery.

The report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights looked at the situation in all EU member states and found that in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia third-country nationals were only protected in exceptional situations and not as a rule.

In these countries, and also in another five, exploitation of workers occurred more frequently than trafficking or forced labour, yet had the least amount of protection.

In Cyprus forced labour is punishable by up to six years in jail, trafficking up to 15 years and exploitation up to five years.

The least protected foreign workers on the island were those in agriculture, forestry and fishing, domestic workers and those in the hospitality industry.

But while the latter are protected in Cyprus to some degree, as are construction workers, through trade unions and collective agreements, there is no oversight in the other two sectors.

“In Cyprus it was commonly agreed in interviews and during the focus group discussion that labour exploitation of foreign domestic workers is significantly underreported and is an area of particularly severe exploitation,” the report said.

“Domestic workers do not have collective agreements and are therefore not covered by workers’ unions and cannot be represented or supported in any way by them.”

On top of that labour inspectors are rarely authorised to enter private homes without court authorisation, the report added.

“Exploitation in domestic work, including of au pairs and those providing care for the elderly, often remains invisible because of a particular lack of monitoring of this sector in many member states, in large part as a result of the legal and practical challenges related to inspecting private homes.”

Another problem for domestic workers and those in the agriculture sector is that work permit schemes bind the worker to one specific employer and the fact that the permits are granted to the employers and not to the employees “creates a dangerous dependency” for the worker as they are dependent on the employer to secure and renew such permits.

“This can lead to situations in which the worker will accept working conditions that are unacceptable,” the report said.

The fear of arrest, detention and deportation or expulsion of migrant victims of crime was seen by experts – for example in Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Greece and Slovakia – as preventing migrants from reporting crime and accessing assistance and justice.

The experts also viewed victim support services as lacking or ineffective in practice, with very few services dedicated to victims of labour exploitation specifically, and many services outright excluding them unless trafficking or violence is involved.

The report said case studies showed that, as a result of limited prosecutions, offenders faced a low risk of having to compensate exploited workers who have moved within or into the EU.

It said that in one case involving Romanian workers in Cyprus proceedings took two years to start, and following that it could take another four to five years to reach a judgment. “Furthermore, even if a judgment does order compensation, it is not guaranteed that the victim will receive it,” the report added.

From expert interviews conducted and case studies identified in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, it also appeared that, in trying to access support services and justice, workers often faced a lack of sensitivity on the part of authorities “from patronising victims to discriminatory attitudes”.

The Office of the Ombudswoman, responding on Monday to the report said the results were particularly important for Cyprus and should raise serious concerns, since the issue of exploitation involved a large group of the country’s workforce – EU citizens and third-country nationals, “mostly immigrant women, who are particularly vulnerable to multiple discriminatory practices”.

The statement said the research showed that Cyprus was among the countries where there were serious weaknesses in preventing exploitation, protecting and supporting victims, and effectively prosecuting exploiters.

“Despite the scale of the phenomenon, labour exploitation remains largely invisible, because it does not seem to concern the media, nor is it given a second thought by the consumers and customers of services that result from the work of victims,” the Ombudswoman’s statement added.





