Chinese officials raid gang smuggling 108 Vietnamese over border to work as cheap factory labourers
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 30 March, 2016, 11:27am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 30 March, 2016, 11:33am
Mimi Lau
[email protected]
Mainland public security raided a human smuggling ring run by nine Chinese organisers as they were transferring 108 Vietnamese illegal immigrants to Guangdong factories to act as cheap labourers.
A report by China Youth Daily revealed that Guangxi police received a tip-off on February 29 that a Vietnamese woman had been planning to smuggle a large group of illegal immigrants across the border in Guangxi province to work in Guangdong and Fujian factories on March 2.
The report said the smuggling gang had received commissions from factories looking for cheap labourers.
Once an order for workers had been placed, the smugglers would then contact other people transporting illegal immigrants and running a transit warehouse where labourers stayed after crossing the Guangxi border.
In order to work in China, each illegal immigrant had to pay a handling and transportation fee of between 600 yuan and 1,000 yuan to the smugglers, who then arranged transport and acted as lookouts at highway toll areas and petrol stations, the report said.
One suspected Chinese smuggler was paid 2,850 yuan to drive a van of 29 Vietnamese people to a transit warehouse in Jiangzhou township in the city of Chongzuo city in Guangxi, the report said.
Citing a 40-year-old Vietnamese illegal immigrant, the report said he had learnt that a Guangdong Jiangmen tile factory was prepared to pay workers a salary of 3,000 yuan a month – three times the pay in Vietnam for a similar job.
The illegal immigrant said he had travelled for 10 hours by bus to the Vietnamese border and then was driven in another three vehicles before arriving at Chongzuo transit warehouse.
“It actually doesn’t cost much to get a proper permit [for entering China], so I should have done that instead of entering illegally,” he sold the China Youth Daily.
According to Guangxi public security’s border control, a total of 2,340 illegal immigrants and 59 organisers involved in 34 separate cases have been detained in the first three months this year– an increase of 13 per cent compared with the same period last year.
The report said other inland public security officials had sent 930 illegal immigrants to Guangxi border control for deportation back to Vietnam.
Up to March this year, 2,889 immigrants have been deported.
