The owner of a Hotel de Manitoba accused of trafficking in persons was given a bond after four of his Indian employees reported that they were poorly paid, forced to work 15 hours and threatened with deportation.
Jai Inder Sandhu, 63, sat in silence in the prisoner’s box in a Winnipeg Court Chamber on Wednesday afternoon when the judge of the Provincial Court of Manitoba, Robert Heinrichs, pronounced the reasons for his decision. These reasons cannot be revealed due to a publication prohibition.
Sandhu’s launching conditions include complying with a curfew, turning in his Canadian passport to RCMP within 48 hours after the release of custody and not having contact with the four plaintiffs in the case or with his coacked, Satbir Sandhu, 48, unless they are with their lawyers or as necessary for judicial purposes.
RCMP announced last month that they had accused both of them, which are a couple, with people trafficking and receiving material benefits from trafficking, while Jai Inder Sandhu was also accused of retaining or destroying documents and pronouncing threats.
Police did not identify their hotel by name, but CBC News confirmed that Jai Inder Sandhu owns the Howard Johnson hotel in Portage La Prairie.
Sandhu’s launch conditions include a $ 10,000 bail in cash and guarantees for a total of $ 40,000. He was also ordered to live in a specific direction in Winnipeg and not move without the permission of the court.
Mounties said that his investigation in the case began on February 9, when they received a call on a disturbance at the hotel west of Winnipeg, where the four employees lived and worked.
Two employees later appeared to inform the police to the police, and another woman and a man were also identified as victims, said RCMP.
Mounties said that the four promised fair wages, affordable life and legal work in Manitoba through federal impact assessments of the labor market: documents issued to employers by the federal government that allow them to hire foreign workers if they cannot find a Canadian or permanent resident to occupy a position.
Until recentlyThese evaluations allowed foreign citizens to work legally in Canada and increased their chances of becoming permanent residents by adding points to their permanent residence requests.
Look | 2 arrested in labor traffic research, says Manitoba RCMP:
Manitoba RCMP says that two people have been accused in an investigation of work traffic that involves a hotel in the rural municipality of Portage La Prairie.
In the Portage la Prairie case, while three of the employees finally obtained the evaluation document, which would have legalized their work, the employer did not meet the conditions described. Another employees never obtained one, said RCMP.
The employees reported that they were paid approximately half of the minimum wage per hour of Manitoba and said they faced threats of deportation and other intimidation tactics. In one case, a person said that his identification documents were retained from them, Mounties said.
The four did “almost everything” at the hotel, from working at the counter and the restaurant to cleaning, RCMP said. A person was recruited through Friends of Family, while others were involved with mouth to mouth or online ads.
Everyone had been working at the hotel for 10 months to a year, police said.
