Brazil’s Public Ministry of Labor (MPT) said on Dec. 23 that it had rescued 163 Chinese workers who were living in conditions akin to slavery while building electric vehicle manufacturer BYD’s first factory in the country.
The Chinese company is building a factory at Camaçari near Salvador in Bahia state, which was due to open in March 2025.
Inspectors from the MPT—a legal body independent of Brazil’s government that enforces labor laws—recently visited the construction site and various accommodation buildings and produced a damning report.
The MPT said a series of inspections, which began last month, found the workers employed by Jinjiang, a company of construction contractors, living in unsanitary conditions in four main lodgings in Camaçari.
“The conditions found in the lodgings revealed an alarming picture of precariousness and degradation,” it said.
The MPT also found there were several indicators of “forced labor,” including the fact that workers had their passports withheld, were required to pay a security deposit before they started, had 60 percent of their salaries withheld, and faced “excessive” costs if they sought to quit the job.
Those who tried to terminate their contracts would lose their security deposit and be forced to pay back the cost of their plane ticket from China to Brazil, according to MPT’s report.
The MPT said this meant that if a worker tried to terminate their contract after six months, they would leave Brazil without any pay at all.
It said conditions were degrading with workers in one accommodation building sleeping on beds without mattresses and with no lockers for their personal belongings, which were mixed in with food supplies.
“The sanitary situation was especially critical, with only one bathroom for every 31 workers, forcing them to wake up at 4 a.m. to form a line and be able to get ready to leave for work at 5:30 a.m.,” the statement said.
The MPT said, “All the lodgings shared serious infrastructure and hygiene problems. The bathrooms, in addition to being insufficient, were not separated by sex, did not have adequate toilet seats and presented precarious hygiene conditions.”
It said workers were often washing their clothes in their bathrooms because of a lack of proper laundry facilities.
Inspectors also found pots of prepared food left open on the floor of one room, unrefrigerated and exposed to dirt, to be served the following day.
The MPT said the chemical toilets at the construction site were in a deplorable state with only eight toilets for 600 workers. Laborers were working in intense heat and sunlight and many showed “visible signs of skin damage,” MPT said.
There were a number of workplace accidents, one of which was blamed on sleep deprivation caused by inadequate housing conditions and long working hours, according to the report.
MPT said the workers would remain in the accommodation buildings but will not be able to work, and will have their employment contracts terminated.
Accommodation buildings and construction sites would remain inactive until they were fully regularized by a task force made up of MPT, the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), federal police, and several other government agencies.
A virtual hearing has been scheduled for Dec. 26, when BYD and Jinjang will be asked how they plan to bring the accommodation buildings up to minimum standards.
The Epoch Times reached out to BYD for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
