“‘Targets are unrealistic’: sacked fruit picker tells of treatment on Kent farm”

…“We could hardly breathe in there,” he said. “It was very difficult to work because the weather was very hot.”..

Not long after returning to the caravan, Ilyas’s contract was terminated…

The farm, Mansfields in Kent, is one of the biggest in the country. ..

Lee Port, the chief executive of Mansfields, said: “We use targets as much as possible as we need people to understand expectations from the moment they start working with us. On the first day of picking we communicate through training that the focus is on quality and that we would expect a first-time picker to pick around 50-60% of the target set.”..

Ilyas said the company promised to find him work in the UK and that after about nine months of waiting it told him about Pro-Force…

Pro-Force said there was no log of Ilyas reporting that he made payments to a third party but it was investigating the company after the Guardian flagged it to them.

Pro-Force said: “Pro-Force places worker welfare front and centre of its operations and commits to such in its strategic objectives….