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When Agung* arrived at Heathrow Airport in July, he thought it was the start of a better financial future for his family.
He expected six months of lucrative farm work in Britain to help his mother and siblings back home in Java. He had no idea that the harvest was already well underway – or that the pay would be a fraction of what he had hoped for.
Agung said he paid a Javanese broker more than £4,650 for the job in April and took out a loan with 3% monthly interest to fund it. His visa finally arrived in June but he didn’t travel for another month.
His first job was at Castleton Farm in Aberdeenshire, supplying berries to supermarkets including M&S, Waitrose, Tesco and Lidl. He didn’t realize it was so far from London and was shocked when he had to pay £95 to get there, adding to his mounting debt.
Once he started picking berries, he found it impossible to meet the targets. He said they would start work around 5 a.m. and if he hadn’t picked enough by 9 a.m., he was sent back to the fleet for the day. Typically he said this means he takes home a little over £200 a week.
Instead of the riches he had hoped for, Agung gave up food to try to get ahead in paying off debts. “I transferred almost all the money I earned to Indonesia,” he said. “Sometimes I didn’t have enough food for me because all I could think about was that I had to pay my debts.”
By September, Agung was fired because he had three warnings for days off for being too slow. He said he earned around £1,500 in two months.
“My family really needs money. What I got was not enough to help them,” he said.
He paid his own transport to Kent and began picking apples at another farm. But in early November that work stopped because “there was no more fruit left to pick”.
He moved to London with a friend and managed to rent a room, wondering whether to take his chances on the black market or go home early. He said he still owed more than £1,700 back home and was being charged 3% interest every month.
“I think some of the treatment is totally inappropriate,” he said. “There is no more work, but we are still in debt.”
Ross Mitchell, Castleton Fruit’s managing director, said the farm had “a disciplinary process, like all employers dealing with performance-related issues” which was audited annually and heavily regulated.
He said the well-being of workers was “extremely important” and that it employed about 1,000 people each year, more than 70% of whom returned. He added that the 106 Indonesians who arrived at the farm this year worked an average of 41.81 hours, for an average weekly gross salary of £450.68 (before charging expenses such as accommodation) and 70 were still in Castellon.
Mitchell said the farm is concerned about “payments sought by third-party agents” and that it relies on “approved agents to conduct due diligence to ensure workers are not paying excessive fees.”
Mitchell said he first became aware of the charges levied on the workers after arriving at the farm and was “very concerned” and immediately reported it to the agent, authorities and customers. He added: “We hoped that the relevant bodies would act on the issue.”
Moktar* of Lombok, who worked with Agung, is also still in debt for what he paid to come to Britain. He managed to pick more fruit at Castleton but says he was still earning around £300 a week.
He said he only managed to send his wife home about £100 a month, once he paid off debts and took into account his own living expenses. Debt hangs over his excitement on returning home.
“I would be very happy to see my family again,” he said, “but on the other hand I feel ashamed.”
* Names have been changed to protect identity.
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