Nearly four dozen migrant workers from Myanmar’s Sagaing region returned home Wednesday after fleeing from a sugar plantation across the border in southwest China’s Yunnan province, where they said they were cheated out of wages by their employer and forced to endure miserable living conditions, RFA reported.

The 45 workers said they had been promised decent salaries by two brokers to labour at a sugar plantation in Yunnan’s Baoshan county, as well as “comfortable living conditions” in dormitories that had access to electricity and clean water, when they agreed to travel to the area in several groups beginning in December last year.

But soon after arriving, their employer refused to honour the terms offered by the brokers, took away their documents, and threatened to report them as illegal migrants if they complained.