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slave shame
If your car wash costs less than £6 – it could be done by slaves who are beaten and starved
Hand car washes may seem like a bargain, but it's the exploited workers who often end up paying the price - sometimes with their lives
THERE are few things more satisfying than having your filthy car turned into a gleaming motor - especially if you haven't had to get the rubber gloves on yourself. But while millions of us rely on hand car washes - just who are the people washing your car?
If you've paid less than £6, chances are they are a slave.
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Victims are threatened with violence against their families, have their passports stolen so they can't leave, and are crammed into rat-infested housing.
Forced to work with toxic chemicals and no protective clothing, medics report cases where car wash slaves have found their shoes fused to their skin for weeks.
Nor are these isolated incidents - there are 19,000 unregulated car wash sites, and 27 per cent of slave labour cases in 2017 involved car wash workers.
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As part of the Sun's Stamp Out Slavery campaign in conjunction with the Co Op, which proposes to extend support given to rescued slaves from 45 days to one year, we investigate the horrifying truth behind cheap car washes.
‘They showed me a box of weapons and threatened to hurt my family’
Joe, in his early twenties, travelled by coach from Poland to the UK after being promised building work in 2013 - but when he arrived he was forced to work 20-hour days for free in a car wash and his gang master stole his passport so he couldn't leave.
He and the other men working there were forbidden from taking lunch breaks or eating during their shifts - and working in the cold and wet for so many hours left them sick.
They were threatened with violence and given no rest - the men were forced to live in a tiny room in a flat, with no heating or beds to sleep in - and they were fed scraps by their captors, who patrolled their digs at night.
He says: “Whenever I complained about how badly I was being treated I was threatened with homelessness and violence towards me and my family.
"They claimed that they knew my family’s home address back in Poland and that they would go and hurt them if I didn't do what I was told. They also showed me a box of weapons that they said they would use on anyone who went against them."
The Sun wants to Stamp out Slavery
Slavery takes a variety of forms, but most commonly forced labour, sexual exploitation, domestic work or forced criminal activity.
The Home Office estimated that there are 13,000 people held in slavery in the UK, with the Global Slavery Index suggesting the figure could be as many as 136,000.
The UK recognised a staggering 5,145 victims from 116 countries in 2017, including adults who had been used for organ harvesting and children that were forced into sexual exploitation.
At present, trafficked victims have just 45 days government support after being recognised as a victim. Campaigners and businesses say this is not enough time for victims to find a place to live and means to support themselves so they risk becoming homeless and destitute.
We want the government to:
Back Lord McColl's proposed bill, which suggests all victims of modern slavery should be given a year to recover, and alongside that they should be given special support to help them, including housing benefits, financial support and other services.
Fearing for his life, Joe eventually fled with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, and was referred to The Salvation Army who helped him find a safe house, where he is currently living.
But sadly, like many victims of modern day slavery, Joe was so scared of his traffickers that he didn’t want to speak to the police so there was no investigation into his case.
Electrocuted in the shower
When labourer Sandu Laurentiu-Sava first arrived in the UK and landed a job in a car wash, he believed it was the perfect opportunity he'd been looking for to earn enough money to provide for his family back home in Romania.
However, the horrific reality that greeted him was very different.
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When he arrived in the UK, he was forced to work long days at Bubbles Car Wash in Bethnal Green, East London, and kept in a squalid, rat-infested flat owned by his employer that he shared with five other workers.
One summer evening in August 2015 after a long shift Sandu, 40, was electrocuted and killed while taking a shower.
Car wash owner Shaip Nimani, then 52, was jailed for four years after admitting manslaughter.
'His shoes had to be surgically removed from his feet'
Workers without rubber gloves have suffered burns from putting their bare hands into water tainted with chemicals, and a lack of protective footwear has also led to trench foot - a painful condition of the feet caused by long immersion in cold water.
medic Anne Read attended a police raid to provide support to potential victims last year and was horrified by what she saw.
HELP STAMP OUT SLAVERY
Want to help? Here are some of the possible warning signs to look for, according to the Modern Slavery Helpline:
- Workers don't have proper equipment for the job - look out for a lack of protective gloves, waterproof boots and goggles
- The cost of the wash is extremely low - think about how many people are working, and how many cars would they have to wash to make minimum wage
- The workers live on, or very close to, the car wash site - exploiters will often put labourers up low quality makeshift accommodation, and make them pay for it
- If they don't live on site they may be dropped off and picked up in groups
- They work excessively long hours
- The car wash only accepts cash, and operates a 'pay the manager only' system - this could be a warning sign the workers aren't seeing any of the customers' money
- Workers may appear frightened and scared, and reluctant to engage in conversation
Suspicious? You can call the Modern Slavery Helpline on 08000 121 700, or fill in an online report at: www.modernslaveryhelpline.org/report
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She says: “We were offering them food and drink and the chance for a shower and a change of clothes while victims were being interviewed."
“Whilst other men gratefully took the new clothes offered, one of them seemed reluctant to remove his shoes. When we asked if he was OK, he showed us his feet.
"He had been wearing just his own lightweight shoes to work on the car wash. Over time the harsh chemicals in the cleaning fluids he had been forced to use had fused his shoes onto his feet, which meant that he hadn’t been able to remove them for weeks.
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"The shoes had to be surgically removed.
"This is just one of many stories of the unspeakable cruelty people face at the hands of their trafficker which we see everyday as victims of modern slavery come to us for support."
Made to live in rat-infested caravans with no heating
Despite being promised work and accommodation by gang members posing as recruiters, sadly for the large number of car wash labourers trafficked to the UK, the pay and living conditions are diabolical.
"Hand car washing has grown largely unchecked for the past 15 to 20 years," car wash expert Dawn Frazer says.
"We now find that unregulated hand car wash sites are prolific in pretty much every area of the UK and the conditions on many hand car wash sites are often appalling."
In November last year police raided a premises in Manchester and three men were detained.
Police said ten ‘potential victims’ of slavery were rescued following the sting on Drive and Shine car wash.
In 2013 Kristian Holub admitted forcing Czech immigrant Milan Tencik - who was made to sleep on the floor - to work in a car wash, and business owner Ali Mohammed Raza was jailed for six years in 2014 for trafficking five Syrian illegal immigrants to Hull to clean vehicles.
In the same year brothers Igor and Marek Marcin got 52 months and 40 months’ jail time for trafficking 12 Czech and Slovak men to work in car washes and factories, paying them just £5 a week and putting them up in bug-infested rooms.
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Heartbreaking stories like these are why The Sun is backing calls for a change in the law so that specialist support given to modern slavery victims – including forced labour and human trafficking – is increased from as little as 45 days to a full year, as they rebuild their lives.
You can sign the petition for the Modern Slavery Victim Support Bill .
Find out more about Co-Op's Bright Future programme, which offers employment to survivors of modern slavery, .
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