Up to 700 migrants who were squatting in abandoned buildings
without water and electricity in San Nicola Varco, some 100
kilometres south of Naples, have been evacuated by the Italian
Police, with many transferred to nearby identification and
expulsion centres.

The migrants, all young men from Morocco, worked without a
contract in the agricultural sector where they were exploited by
unscrupulous employers to labour in nearby greenhouses and
fields. 

An IOM team discovered in July that many of the migrants living
in the area had entered Italy with a regular visa. Some said they
had paid up to 8,000 Euros to middle-men in Morocco to obtain a
seasonal work contract in Italy.

Once in the country, the migrants found that their employer had
disappeared or just refused to employ them.

Without a legal work permit, they became irregular migrants with
many falling into exploitative situations when working in the
agricultural sector. The migrants, all young men, said they had
been paid between 15-25 Euros for a 12.5 hour day and had to pay
employers for services such as water.

"We discovered that many migrants had visas with details of the
Italian employers who refused to hire them. We collected all the
relevant information and passed it to the local prosecutors. We
wanted to give the migrants the possibility to denounce this fraud
in order to receive some kind of protection," says Peter Schatzer,
IOM Chief of Mission in Italy.

Without a response from the relevant authorities, IOM is
concerned that the potential removal of the deceived migrants will
put an end to the on-going judicial enquiry.

"This effectively means that those who organized and benefited
from this scam might not be brought to justice while the migrants,
who were duped by unscrupulous employers, run the risk of being
denounced as irregular migrants under a new law," says IOM's Peter
Schatzer. "It would also set a precedent to the effect that the
seasonal worker quota can be abused to deceive more migrants in
search of better life conditions."

Illegal labour in Italy, especially in the agricultural sector,
is widespread. Official statistics show that it accounts for
between 15.9 per cent and 17.6 per cent of the country's gross
domestic product.

The demand for this kind of labour was the focus of a new IOM
campaign launched last month. "Buy Responsibly" aims to not only
raise awareness of the demand side of labour exploitation, but also
to encourage consumers to play a role in ending this kind of
exploitation.

To find out more about the campaign, please go to "paragraph-link-no-underline" href="http://www.buyresponsibly.org"
target="_blank" title="">www.buyresponsibly.org

For more information please contact:

Flavio Di Giacomo

IOM Rome

Tel. +39 06 44 186 207

E-mail: "mailto:fdigiacomo@iom.int">fdigiacomo@iom.int