Montreal: A UN special rapporteur says he is deeply concerned over the abuses and exploitation of migrant workers in Canada.
Tomoya Obokata said he got the information about abuses from migrant workers during a two-week fact-finding mission to Canada.
As per western media reports on Wednesday Canada’s temporary foreign worker programme paves the way for modern forms of slavery.
TFWPs makes migrant vulnerable to abuses
Obokata said migrant workers have become vulnerable because of Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWPs) as they cannot report abuses amid fear of deportation.
His comments come following a letter sent by a group of Jamaican farmworkers to the country’s labour minister about mistreatment of two Ontario farms.
They said they were treated like animals and punished for not working fast enough.
The human rights activists for many years have been calling upon the Canadian government to resolve issues in its temporary foreign worker programmes.
Each year about 50,000 and 60,000 foreign agricultural labourers come to Canada on provisional permits to work in different sectors.
Foreign workers come to o Canada through Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). The scheme allows Canadian employers to hire temporary migrant workers from Mexico and 11 countries in the Caribbean. They can n have jobs for up to eight months in the year.
