Slave-labour factory Leisure Clothing has closed down

Slave-labour factory Leisure Clothing, which is 100% owned by the Chinese government after being set up in Malta in the 1980s, has quietly shut down. The Malta Independent went on site today after receiving a tip-off, and found the factory silent, with just the one remaining employee who said that the company “will be moving into construction”.

I think this bears further investigation as it is a major story in itself: the Chinese government moving into the construction business in Malta, with Chinese and other slave/indentured labourers.

The Malta Independent also visited the barracks where the slave/indentured labourers were held outside their long working-hours, and found them empty.

There is now no way of knowing what has happened to those labourers, whether they were given their passports – which had been sequestered by their employers – and allowed to return home, whether they were paid the money they were owed, or whether they have been trafficked into some other part of Europe to work under slave conditions there. Or even whether they are still in Malta and working in ‘massage’ parlours.

Leisure Clothing was embroiled in a massive scandal two years ago, when a couple of its Vietnamese labourers were caught trying to leave Malta with fake papers.

They told the police they were desperate to return home and had no choice but to use the false passports because their employers at Leisure Clothing had taken their real passports and refused to return them, holding them hostage. They also said they hadn’t been paid what they were owed.

The ensuing brouhaha led to the director of Leisure Clothing, Han Bin – seen here with the Energy Minister and Mrs Konrad Mizzi – being prosecuted for labour law violations. The case was heard in its initial stages by Magistrate Carol Peralta, who then stepped down from his post, saying he wished to retire early (the real reason may have cases pending against him before the Commission for the Administration of Justice).

Nothing has been heard about the Leisure Clothing case or the prosecution of Han Bin since then.

Mrs Muscat pays a royal visit to the Chinese-government-owned factory, Leisure Clothing, which was set up in Malta in the 1980s and which – at the time she visited – was using the labour of North Korean slaves and of indentured workers from China and Vietnam, whose passports had been sequestered by their employers.