A former Vietnamese employee of Chinese state-owned clothing manufacturer Leisure Clothing told a court that she worked long hours - including forced overtime - to earn considerably less than minimum wage as the compilation of evidence against two of its directors continued today.
Managing director Han Bin, a 46-year-old naturalised Maltese citizen who lives in San Ġwann, and marketing director Liu Jia, a 31-year-old Chinese national who lives at China House in Ħal Far along with many of the company's employees, face a total of nine charges, including the human trafficking of nine Vietnamese persons for the purposes of labour exploitation, misappropriating money owed to them and failing to comply with employment regulations.
The key witness in today's sitting was one of the alleged victims, Nguyen Thi Hien, who said that a friend had introduced her to an agent company which promised high-paying employment in Malta.
Ms Nguyen said that she earned around €110 a month by working 8-hour days in her native country, and was promised some €600 a month and possibly more if she came to work in Malta as a seamstress in a clothing manufacturer. The agency charged her $3,500 - covering its own commission, flight tickets and other expenses - to make the deal possible, an amount she borrowed from various relatives.
She was asked to learn Chinese, only to find herself in a class which had started lessons months ago. But when she sought clarifications, the agency simply told her that she did not need to know much, and that the more she learned, the more arguments she would get into with her bosses.
Ms Nguyen was asked to sign a contract on 27 March, 2013, three days before she arrived in Malta.
But she was presented with two contracts, one in Vietnamese which offered a base salary of €680 a month, and another in Vietnamese and Chinese which only offered a base salary of €140, plus additional income based on her production. Ms Nguyen sought clarifications and was even considering to change her mind, but was assured that her actual conditions would actually be better since they would follow Maltese law, and also told that the money she paid would not be refunded.
Mr Han was party to the second contract, which was presented as evidence.
A man and a woman were waiting for Ms Nguyen when she arrived in Malta, and the first thing they did, she explained, was take her passport, before taking her to China House.
Magistrate Carol Peralta then asked Ms Nguyen to describe her living quarters and what she did in her free time, and her assertion that she had no free time drew howls of disapproval from a number of Maltese Leisure Clothing employees who were present.
Ms Nguyen later clarified that she was free to leave China House during days off, but noted that she only had an off day every two Sundays at most.
She explained that she started work on 7am - even though her contract specified an 8am start - from Monday to Saturday, finishing at 5:45pm on Tuesday and Saturday and finishing at 7:45pm on other days. On Sunday, she worked from 8am to 6pm. Breaks amounted to a total of 80 minutes per day.
But Ms Nguyen added that after some two weeks, she was expected to do overtime daily, thus finishing work at 9:30pm. For working overtime between 5:45pm and 9:30pm, she said, she would receive some €1.70. She later said that it was not unusual for her to receive some €8-10 for a 14-hour working day.
The witness presented payslips as evidence, including one which showed that she earned some €635 in a month and which did not distinguish what was paid in overtime. The national minimum weekly wage for people aged 18 and over stood at €165.68 - based on a 40-hour week - translating to over €700 per month.
Ms Nguyen, who stopped working for Leisure Clothing on 27 October, 2014, said that she managed to send some €5,565 to her family, but said that the company still owed her some €3,000. She added that she has tried to get this money on a number of occasions, only to be met with excuses, such as her boss not being present.
The case continues on 7 January.