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Immigration Daily News Restaurant ordered to pay $200,000 for keeping Indian cook as a slave
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Restaurant ordered to pay $200,000 for keeping Indian cook as a slave
Desperate to fix his 'grotesque abuse' of an Indian cook recruited from a small village in India, the restaurant owner of Mand’s Indian Restaurant falsified time records, pay slips and information provided to the tax office and Immigration Department.
Federal Circuit Judge Rolf Driver however rubbished the information provided by Divye Kumar Trivedi and found instead that Trivedi took away the cook’s passport and told him that he could not leave Australia until he repaid a debt of $7000.
Justice Driver found that Trivedi, who owned the Indian restaurant in Eastwood in Sydney’s northwest, had ‘built a façade upon sham documents to deceive the Department of Immigration and the ATO and attempted to deceive this court’, according to a report in The Australian.
Justice Driver accepted that the cook, Mr Dulo Ram, couldn’t speak English, had worked for 16 months, from August 2007 to December 2008, with only one day off on Christmas Day, and that he had lived in the restaurant storeroom and washed in the kitchen using buckets of hot water.
“When the Department of Immigration eventually investigated his circumstances, its officials were fobbed off with lies and fabricated documents” said the judge.
Even complaints to the Fairwork Ombudsman failed as they relied on the time-records and payslips provided by Trivedi.
It was only when Mr Ram escaped and went to the police that action was taken.
Justice Driver ordered Trivedi to pay $186,000 to Mr Ram in back-pay, entitlements and interest. Trivedi could also face penalties under the Fair Work Act. According to The Australian, Trivedi had earlier escaped with $1000 fine and 250 hours of community service after pleading guilty to trafficking offences in 2011.
David Hillard, the pro bono partner at law firm Clayton Utz, which acted for Mr Ram said the facts of the case were shocking but he was thrilled with the decision.
“The thing that keeps striking me is that this stuff is happening right now in our community under our noses. This was a suburban Sydney restaurant that had a man working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and living in their kitchen,” he told The Australian.
Comments
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Monday, 30 March 2015The Indian 'caste and slavery system' go everywhere with some Indians - even though they live in Australia, they still are Indians at heart, treating their staff like slaves - as they do back home!
In the UK and USA several such 'slave labour' cases even by some 'high profile' Indians were exposed! A handful were prosecuted.
This is only one of many in the Indian community here in Sydney - which was exposed. Hundreds more are yet to be 'discovered'. It's common among the Indians, but hidden to non-Indians. It's so easy to fool the DIBP, TAX Dept and the Courts.
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Systems are ALWAYS going to be taken for a ride by those who THINK they can keep their employees indentured as if they had no rights... Vigiliance about these issues is EVERYONE's Business.
I am so glad that the client was able to win back pay owed to him and that he can put this horrible situation behind him.
Reflecting on the issue very generally and of late, the 457 program is the program everyone picks on and it must be scary to be a 457 applicant or sponsor/nominator reading about these rorts - there are honest, hardworking 457 business sponsors who do the right thing by their workers so in throwing in the bad with the good, we lose sight of this.
I'd also like to say that the role of an RMA is to provide the correct advice in terms of regulatory compliance and if we are not quite sure that what we are being engaged for is the right thing, then the ethical thing to do is to walk away from it as soon as we can. Sure, we lose a 457 case but it is what it is...
On the other hand, by working with our clients, expanding our knowledge about business compliance as well as Immigration complaince and and supporting them to do the right thing within the scope of our work, everyone wins.