News / Palestine

Thai workers being abused in Israel: HRW

Wednesday, 21 January 2015 10:17 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 21 January 2015 10:17 AM ]

The file photo shows a Thai agricultural worker in Israel.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Thai laborers employed in Israeli farms are being abused in a series of highly unfavorable working conditions.

According to the HRW’s “A Raw Deal: Abuses of Thai Workers in Israel’s Agricultural Sector” report, which was published on Wednesday, some 25,000 Thai workers are suffering from “low pay, excessive working hours, hazardous working conditions, and poor housing.”

The 48-page report, which is based on interviews with 173 Thai workers, said the migrants “were paid less than the legal minimum wage, forced to work far more hours than the legal limit, exposed to unsafe working conditions, and had difficulties if they tried to change employers.”

Many of the workers were reportedly given “makeshift and inadequate” accommodation.

The report said that, while Israel “depends to a large extent on the labor of Thai migrant workers,” it is “doing far too little to uphold their rights and protect them from exploitation.”

An Israeli NGO, The Workers Hotline, has said its findings support the report by the HRW.

“The Israeli agricultural sector is a greenhouse for violations of migrant workers’ labour and human rights,” the Israeli NGO said in a recent statement, citing the “lack of enforcement” as the main cause for the situation of migrant workers in Israel.

SZH/HJL

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