When Ubay* was told in January that he and his wife had been selected to work in the UK, they celebrated. The 37-year-old father of four from Uzbekistan, had seen his timber import business go bankrupt. Here was a chance to get his family out of debt.
He had previously received similar offers that looked like scams, but this time there was no reason to be suspicious. The recruitment drive was organised by the Uzbek government. There had been a formal interview process. He would be working on a UK government visa.
More than six months later, however, Ubay’s involvement in the UK’s seasonal worker scheme has left him unemployed and with yet more loans he can’t pay off.
Ubay is one of nearly 100 workers from Uzbekistan who paid hundreds of pounds to work on UK farms and have been left without the jobs they had been promised after the Home Office revoked the sponsor licence of the company that recruited them.
“Working in the UK gave me a lot of hope,” Ubay told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). “But when we lost our jobs, we lost all hope … I don’t know how to repay the debt.”
The workers had each paid nearly £400 to the Home Office and a government contractor for seasonal workers’ visas before the UK-based recruitment company, Ethero, had its licence cancelled earlier this month. Some workers who spoke to TBIJ said they had quit their jobs in Uzbekistan and paid out as much as £800 for visas, flights and other costs.
Ethero was one of the six government-licensed recruiters that offer people from overseas a six-month temporary visa to work on farms as part of the UK’s seasonal worker scheme. It had offered jobs to more than 1,800 Uzbek workers but fewer than 400 had been sent to work in the UK before the company had its sponsor licence cancelled on 2 August, reportedly because it could not guarantee the required minimum number of paid hours.
The consortium to which Ethero belongs has told workers it will not be offering them compensation.
Ubay says he and his wife borrowed more than £800 – the equivalent of more than three months’ wages in Uzbekistan – to pay fees to the UK Home Office, the contractor in charge of processing visas and the Uzbek government, as well as for a medical certificate. Besides the money he has wasted, he says, he lost seven months of his life during which he turned down other jobs. With he and his wife both unemployed, they have borrowed more money to make ends meet.
The Uzbek government has offered to give back about £100 workers paid in administrative costs. At least one person has been told by the Home Office they would be entitled to a £300 refund if they withdrew their application. However, they would still be out of pocket by about £100, since there has been no offer to refund the visa processing charge or the cost of their medical certificates. Other workers told TBIJ they had not been contacted.
On Monday more than a dozen workers went to the offices of the Uzbek government’s ministry of employment demanding to be given the jobs they had been offered – or refunded the money they spent.