A Rwandan woman who was illegally employed as a cleaner by a senior politician in Jersey has called his sentence of 120 hours’ community service “very disappointing”.
Prosecution lawyers sought a jail term of 10 months for Philip Ozouf, who pleaded guilty to breaking his government’s own immigration law by illegally employing migrant workers at a launderette he owned and as cleaners in his home.
“The sentencing is very disappointing,” said Liliane Gikundiro, one of the women who worked for Ozouf, after the verdict. “We spent more days working on this [case] than the days he is going to spend [doing] community service.”
The court heard that Ozouf, 55, had tried to bring workers to the island legally but when his application was refused, struck a deal with a local hotelier who obtained the permits instead. Gikundiro was one of four migrants who arrived in Jersey from Rwanda in the summer of 2021 expecting to work in hospitality.
All four, plus another worker, were then employed by Ozouf to work as cleaners and in his laundry business. None were given contracts and each earned about £12.50 an hour.
Ozouf also accommodated migrant workers at his home and charged them £500 rent a month. He was minister for external (foreign) relations in Jersey’s government for 18 months during the time the offences took place.
Jersey, a tax haven that is a crown dependency of the UK, is heavily reliant on foreign workers in its hospitality and agriculture industries. In 2025, 2,433 seasonal work permits were issued to people coming to the island, with the largest number coming from the Philippines, India and Kenya. That number has more than doubled since 2021.
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Last August The Observer revealed the role of Jersey’s migrant labour laws in the death of a Kenyan woman, Jane Kiiti, who took her own life in 2023. The work permit system, which has been compared to the widely criticised kafala system for migrant workers in the Gulf states, means that migrant workers in Jersey are completely dependent on their employers, who are expected to house and feed them and deduct costs from their salaries.
Until recently, it was forbidden to seek other work on the island without the written permission of employers, which was often refused. The situation has been compared to servitude and would violate the UK Modern Slavery Act, which Jersey is not bound to follow.
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Rhiannon Small, head of service for the Jersey Customs and Immigration Service, said: “Today’s sentencing sends a clear message that breaches of Jersey’s immigration legislation will not be tolerated.”
Asked if she had a message for Ozouf, Gikundiro said: “I’d like to say to them that it is not good to exploit somebody. Especially if you don’t know their background, and know how fragile their brain is. I wish that Philip could understand how traumatic this was.”
Ozouf was approached for comment.
Photography by David Ferguson