Chinese guest worker says he's a slave in Japan under exploitive scheme
Mr En says 'fees' owed to middlemen leave him stuck in an exploitive job
The first word that Mr En learned when he started his new job on a construction site in Japan after moving from China was - "idiot".
The 31-year-old farmer is one of 50,000 Chinese who signed up for a scheme run by the Japanese government that promises to allow foreigners to earn money while they train on the job.
Like many of his compatriots, he hoped to leave Japan with cash in his pocket and a new set of skills that would give him greater chance of getting work at home.
"My Japanese colleagues would always say 'baka' to me," said En, who spoke on condition that his full name was not revealed. "I am exhausted physically and mentally."
His problem is not the bullying by Japanese colleagues, nor the two-hour each-way commute or the mind-numbing work that largely consists of breaking apart bits of old buildings.
It is the one million yen (HK$67,400) he borrowed to take part in the programme, apparently to cover travelling expenses and other "fees" charged by middlemen, which has left him a virtual slave to Japan's labour-hungry construction industry.
"I cannot go back before I make enough money to repay the debt," he said.
Japan is desperately short of workers to pay the taxes to fund pensions and health care for its growing grey population, but it is almost constitutionally allergic to immigration.
The result for Japan, say critics, is ranks of poorly protected employees brought in through the national back door, ripe for abuse and exploitation.
"This trainee programme is a system of slave labour," says Ippei Torii, director of the Solidarity Network With Migrants Japan, a non-governmental group supporting foreign workers.
"You cannot just quit and leave," he said. "It's a system of human trafficking, forced labour."
In 1993, the government began the Industrial Trainee and Technical Internship Programme (TTIP).
The scheme allows tens of thousands of foreigners, mostly from China, Vietnam and Indonesia, to come to Japan, supplying labour for industries including textiles, construction, farming and manufacturing.
However, the US State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report has for years criticised its "deceptive recruitment practices".
Past allegations include unpaid overtime work, - death due to overwork - and harassment like company managers restricting the use of toilets or demanding sexual services.
The Japanese government acknowledges some problems.
"It is not a system of slave labour," an immigration official said. "It is true that some involved in the system have exploited it, but the government has acted against that."
He said it was not in Japanese authorities' power to control the behaviour of middle men, but such organisations were not allowed to charge deposit fees.
