Four senior staff of Indian-owned Popular Rice Mill Limited in Kano have been arrested over illegal detention of 126 Nigerian labourers who were engaged in hard labour since March this year.
247ureports.com gathered that the Nigerian labourers were “forcefully abducted” by the management of the Indian company and were forced to work under hard condition, even with the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown order.
However, police in Kano have rescued the 126 Nigerian labourers, and debunked media reports that the rescued labourers were over 300.
It was also gathered that the company promised to add only N5000 to their meagre pay for working day and night during the lockdown
According to the spokesman of Kano Police Command, Abdullahi Haruna, “on the 21 June, 2020, at about 6 P.M., a complaint was received from Global Community for Human Right Network, Kano, that some labourers were wrongly confined inside Popular Farms and Mills Limited located at No. 54 Challawa Industrial Estate Kano.
“On receipt, teams of Policemen were deployed and when search was conducted, 126 labourers trapped inside the Factory for three months were discovered. Investigation is in progress.”
