Foreign workers to blame for their own squalid living conditions, farmers’ union says

THE FOREIGN workers located on ‘slave farms’ earlier this week were themselves to blame for their squalid living conditions, the head of a farmers’ association claimed yesterday.

Nektarios Karios, head of the Panagrotikos association, said the workers – which included nationals from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Egypt – did not heed their employers’ repeated calls to keep their living quarters clean.

“They did not take the proper sanitary measures,” Karios told a press conference.

He also denied initial media reports that the workers had no beds to sleep on.

On Tuesday, police carried out sting operations at two farms in the Nicosia area, where they found 32 foreign workers.

On one of the farms, five workers claimed their employer forced them to work long hours and withheld their travel documents and pay. The farmer, a 50-year-old Cypriot, is in police custody after being arrested on the charge of exploitation at the workplace.

The foreign workers were found living in rundown shacks. Reports said that in one case, 12 persons had to share a single sleeping quarters, whereas the lack of space forced some of the workers to sleep outdoors in the fields.

On the second farm, thirteen of the workers were subsequently determined to be residing illegally in the country, and are to be deported. A 63-year-old man was charged, and later released, for illegally employing a foreigner and providing asylum to illegal foreigners.

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