Around a hundred prospective seasonal fruit & veg workers in Uzbekistan have been told they cannot enter the UK after the revocation of Ethero’s operator licence.
After months of waiting for news on their applications, the workers have now been informed their applications will be denied due to the licence removal earlier this month.
In a letter seen by The Grocer, Home Office agency UK Visas & Immigration has notified applicants their certificate of sponsorship is no longer valid.
The letter said applicants no longer met the eligibility requirements of the scheme and therefore could receive a refund for their application fee or “if you do not wish to withdraw, the application will be decided and is most likely to be refused”.
Should workers choose not to withdraw and are then refused entry they will not receive their application money back.
Concerns have also been raised about the costs incurred by prospective workers that will not be refunded.
“Many of these workers have made significant sacrifices to migrate, including leaving jobs, family and borrowing money,” said Kate Roberts, policy advisor at Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX).
Read more: Seasonal worker operator fury after licence revoked
One worker told The Grocer he had applied for a visa at the start of May and his passport has been in the system since then. He has also been out of work since this point as he had been preparing to come to the UK and had left his previous job.
“Many people with very limited resources may have left their jobs, paid for medical checks and biometrics services, and paid for travel as well as the visa fee,” explained Caroline Robinson, executive director at Worker Support Centre.
“It is not their fault their scheme operator’s licence has been revoked and they should not be penalised,” she added.
“If the responsibility for a scheme operator losing its licence falls on the shoulders of workers, this will ultimately have a chilling effect on people coming forward to raise concerns about their treatment,” she suggested, pointing to ongoing concerns around the treatment of some foreign seasonal workers in fresh produce supply chains.
Many more Uzbeks already in the UK are also facing an uncertain future due to the license removal. Last week, NGOs, including Worker Support Centre and FLEX, called on the government to rethink how it operates the seasonal worker visa scheme to ensure migrant agricultural workers were protected.
Members of the Seasonal Worker Interest Group said the government must learn the lessons from the previous experience of stripping a scheme operator of its licence in 2023.
Confusion for seasonal workers due to lack of government guidance
“The responsibility for the design of this visa scheme rests with the government,” said Robinson. “This new government should now publicly state how they are going to deal with scheme operator non-compliance and the support that will be available for workers who are caught in the middle through no fault of their own.”
The organisations said the decision to revoke a licence without a mitigation plan to protect workers had potentially wide-ranging consequences.
It added it had pressed the previous government to have a publicly accessible plan in place to deal with the fallout of licence revocation for workers and asked for information to share with workers when it was suspended in May.
The groups said an overhaul was now required to the system as incremental changes would not resolve the complex and interrelated issues facing workers.
“The lack of transparency or published guarantees from government continues to leave workers in the dark about their futures,” said Roberts.
“With tens of thousands of workers migrating to the UK each year to support the horticultural industry, the bare minimum it must do is introduce a clear process to ensure workers are not left high and dry when there is an issue with their scheme operator.”
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