'It was just filthy'

7:20am Thursday 7th August 2008

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FOURTEEN immigrants discovered crammed into a three-bedroom house in Wealdstone may have been bought into the UK by human traffickers.

The semi-detached house in Warham Road was raided at 5am on Tuesday after complaints from residents about a smell coming from an open cesspit in the back garden, which was being used as a toilet.

Officers said 14 Chinese immigrants were sharing one bathroom, which had mould growing in it, and a single kitchen where seven rice cookers were plugged into one power point.

P Shivashankar, a manager for housing licensing for Harrow Council, described conditions in the house as “filthy”.

He said: “There were five people on mattresses in the living room and three in each of the upstairs bedrooms. They had clothes drying there and it was just filthy.

“We would not normally allow more than five people to share the facilities they had. The conditions from a health point of view were unacceptable.

“There was no fire alarm and sockets were dangerously overloaded. If there had been a fire they would not have got out in time.”

It is thought they were working as construction workers, and were paid £1,000 a month between them to live there.

The council plans to prosecute the owner for renting the house to multiple people without a licence. Two of the tenants, one of whom collected rent from the others, are also being questioned.

Mr Shivashankar said: “I suspect there are many more houses like this around Harrow and London in general. They were all young men in their 20s – and none of them seemed to have papers, which would suggest they had been bought here illegally.”

Keith Best, the chief executive of the charity the Immigration Advisory Service, said: “Quite often with the Chinese they are bought over here by organised crime gangs like the Snakeheads, with promises of huge earnings.

“But when they get here what they quite often find is they are living in these cramped conditions, they earn well under minimum wage and there are a lot of deductions taken from their wages.”