Tag Archive for: India

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11-year-old the latest victim of child labor

The Star/Asia News Network

SOUTH INDIA – MAKKAL Osai reported that a girl, Dhanalakshmi, 11, from Tamil Nadu became the latest victim of child labour and torture when she succumbed to her injuries at Kolenchery Medical Mission Hospital in Hyderabad, South India.

It was reported that Dhanalakshmi was in a coma when she was admitted to the hospital on Thursday.

She had sustained injuries like multiple burns and haemorrhage in her left eye.

Paediatricians and physicians found several burns on her body and informed the police.It was reported that her employer, Jose Kurien, who claimed to be a lawyer residing nearby, brought Dhanalakshmi to the hospital.

The hospital authorities said they were told that she was doing domestic work in Kurien’s house and attending to his sick wife. It is suspected that Dhanalakshmi was tortured in his house.

-The Star/Asia News Network

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26 Child Laborers from Bihar Rescued in Delhi

(PTI) Twenty-six child labourers trafficked from Bihar were rescued and eight employers detained by authorities from south Delhi.

The Delhi Police and the task force against child labour conducted the rescue operation in Jamia Nagar area yesterday, said an official of child rights NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), representatives of which also took part in the raid. Read more

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A dozen nations added to U.S. Government child, forced labor list (AP)


WASHINGTON — The Labor Department is adding a dozen countries to the list of nations that use child labor or forced labor, as officials warn the global economic crisis could cause an upswing in the exploitation of children and other workers.

From coffee grown in El Salvador to sapphires mined in Madagascar, the agency’s latest reports, to be released Wednesday, identify 128 goods from 70 countries where child labor, forced labor or both are used in violation of international standards.

“Shining light on these problems is a first step toward motivating governments, the private sector and concerned citizens to take action to end these intolerable abuses that have no place in our modern world,” said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

New to the list are Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Read more

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Friendship week urges vendors to give up child labour

Reprinted from The Times of India

Kalyani Sardesai, TNN, Nov 11, 2010, 04.48am IST
PUNE: Volunteers from the city’s Bal Sena, the childrens’ army backed by Dnyanadevi-Childline, and gammat shalas, the informal schools, are all set to celebrate Childline Maitri ( friendship week) with a sensitisation programme aimed at reaching out to food vendors and urge them not to employ child labour and to call Childline in case they spot a child in trouble.

Childline is a 24 x 7 toll free helpline for children in distress. An initiative of the Ministry for Woman and Child Development, Childline (1098) has a pan-India presence, and is partnered by local NGOs in various cities. All India Childline Maitri week is being celebrated in different cities between November 8 and 14 to coincide with the impending Childrens’ Day.

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Blogger Cites Child Labor at Commonwealth Games in India

In addition to charges or corruption and general mismanagement in the preparations for the Games, there were also reported incidents of child and forced labor being used in various construction projects for the events.
Columbia University Press – https://www.cupblog.org/

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Four rescued from child labour

Printed from
TNN, Aug 29, 2010, 04.44am IST
PUNE: The flying squad of the labour commissioner’s office rescued four boys working as child labourers at a restaurant, a snack bar and a fabrication workshop at Saswad about 40 km from Pune on Friday.

The children were later sent to the observation home in Pune.

The squad had received information that the three establishments near the Saswad state transport bus stand allegedly employed them.

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Gap, Next, and M&S in New Sweatshop Scandal

By: Gethin Chamberlain

The Observer

Indian workers are paid just 25p an hour and forced to work overtime in factories used by some of Britain’s best-known high street stores

Gap, Next and Marks & Spencer have all launched their own inquiries into abuses of working regulations at their Indian suppliers, which have resulted in children such as six-year-old Bubli being left alone while her parents work. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain

Some of the biggest names on the British high street are at the centre of a major sweatshop scandal. An Observer investigation has found staff at their Indian suppliers working up to 16 hours a day.

Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next have all launched their own inquiries into the abuses and pledged to end the practice of excessive overtime, which is in flagrant breach of the industry’s ethical trading initiative (ETI) and Indian labour law.

Some workers say they were paid at half the legal overtime rate. Gap, which uses the same factory as Next, confirmed it had found wage violations and gave its supplier a deadline of midnight last night to repay workers who lost out. M&S says it has yet to see evidence to support the wage claims. Read more

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World Cup Profits Bypass Asian Soccer-Ball Stitchers

By James Rupert

June 9 (Bloomberg) — Asian workers who stitch nearly all the world’s soccer balls have seen little improvement in lives dominated by poverty, a report said days before the start of the World Cup, which promises sports gear companies a sales bonanza.

Thirteen years after companies such as Germany’s Adidas AG and Nike Inc. joined labor and development organizations to end the use of an estimated 7,000 children to stitch soccer balls, “child labor continues to exist” in the three main ball-making countries of Pakistan, China and India, according a June 7 report by the Washington-based International Labor Rights Forum.

In those countries and Thailand, the fourth major ball- producer, adult workers often are paid too little to support their families. Some children still stitch balls at home, while others have migrated to new work, the report said.

“The international campaign of the 1990s removed bonded child labor from our soccer-ball industry, but these children moved to auto workshops, brick kilns and the like,” said Arshed Makhdoom Sabir, president of Ours Pakistan, a non-profit, development organization in Sialkot, Pakistan.

Sialkot is the hub of an industry that made about 75 percent of the world’s hand-sewn soccer balls in the 1990s, and still makes most high-quality balls, the ILRF report said. Adidas is marketing Sialkot-made replicas of its high-tech Jabulani, a machine-molded ball made in China for use in World Cup matches.

Sub-Minimum Wages

The labor forum’s researchers surveyed 218 workers for Sialkot companies that export balls and other products to sports retailers including Nike and Adidas, the two largest in the world. While suppliers for the two big companies provided better conditions for their workers, more than half of Sialkot’s soccer-ball stitchers reported 2009 pay that was below Pakistan’s monthly minimum wage of 6,000 rupees ($70), the report said.

For sewing together the 32 polyurethane outer panels of a soccer ball that sells for $50 in the United States, a Sialkot worker is paid as little as 50 rupees (59 cents) “so obviously international companies can make bigger profits in Pakistan,” Sabir said.

Adidas, Nike

Adidas, based in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, is sponsoring the FIFA World Cup and 12 of the 32 competing national teams, in an effort to beat its 2008 record soccer- related sales of 1.3 billion euros ($1.92 billion), which was fueled by that year’s European Championship tournament. Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike is sponsoring 10 teams in the tournament, which kicks off in South Africa on June 11, as it challenges Adidas’s dominance in soccer retailing.

“Adidas believes that factory wages should always meet basic needs and also provide for reasonable savings and expenditure” by workers, said company spokeswoman Katja Schreiber in an e-mail. Adidas suppliers pay permanent workers “an average of 7,500 rupees per month, plus social benefits,” she said.

Nike “has been working to change how factories in Pakistan pay for soccer balls to shift the industry from a piece-goods system to a wage-based system,” spokesman Derek Kent said by e- mail. The company “hopes to leverage this new model and our experience to establish best practices in the industry.”

Informal Economy

While Pakistan’s economy grew an average annual 7.2 percent from 2004 to 2007, the availability of formal jobs for Pakistanis declined, said Haris Gazdar, an economist at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi, Pakistan. By 2008, nearly 83 percent of male workers, and 93 percent of employed women worked in the informal economy, some as soccer- ball stitchers, beyond the effective reach of minimum wage laws and most other workers’ protection rules, Gazdar said.

Seventy percent of Pakistanis stitching balls are casual workers, often in violation of a law requiring employment contracts and the status of “permanent” worker after nine months of employment, the ILRF report said.

Pakistan on June 5 increased the minimum wage to 7,000 rupees ($82) per month, although “it might need to be twice that level” to let most workers meet basic needs for the average family of seven people, said Gazdar. The World Bank estimates that a quarter of Pakistan’s 180 million people live on less than $1 a day.

China, India

Sialkot-based Awan Sport Industries Ltd., which makes balls for Adidas, and Silver Star Group, which manufactures for Nike, provided significantly better working conditions than most local ball-makers because they used more permanent employees “in formal factory settings,” the report said.

Most Chinese soccer balls are machine-made, although companies in Jiangsu province hire women and children to hand- stitch balls, according to the report. Children still sew balls by hand in the Indian cities of Meerut and Jalandhar, it said.

–With assistance from Matt Townsend in New York and Holger Elfes in Dusseldorf. Editors: Mark Williams, John Brinsley

https://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-09/world-cup-profits-bypass-asian-soccer-ball-stitchers-update1-.html

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net

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Child Labor Horrors in Fashion Industry: “Hide the Shame” is the New Strategy (2007 Press Release)

Washington, DC, November 8, 2007 — With news last Friday that an additional 76 child slaves were rescued from Delhi’s embroidery dens, the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) has called for immediate and responsible action by brands and retailers to end child labor and trafficking of children, as well as forced labor, in their supply chain and sourcing. The Global March Against Child Labor (GMACL), for which the CLC serves as its North American coordinator, estimates that as many as 5,000-7,000 embroidery units may be operating in Delhi, with each unit employing between 25 and 30 children. Many of these children are victims of trafficking and bonded labor, a form of slavery.

Gap Inc. acknowledged on October 29, that one of its suppliers was using child slave labor. Children as young as 10 said they worked 16 hours a day for no pay, according to the British Observer newspaper’s investigation. The retailer issued a public statement and destroyed the products, which would have otherwise ended up on shelves at GapKids.

While Gap owned up to the problem, committed to correct it, and vowed to bring its suppliers into full compliance with its standards, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) reports that a cover-up is being attempted by some other companies doing business in India. In essence, ITGLWF is hearing from some suppliers that they are being pressured to eliminate any paper trail between retailers/brands and Indian subcontractors, who may or may not be using child labor.

“If this is occurring, and we obtain brand or retailer names, consumers will hear about it,” said Sally Greenberg, Executive Director of the National Consumers League and Co-Chair of the CLC. “A ‘cut and run’ response is completely unacceptable, as is a ‘hide our guilt’ response. We expect companies to ensure there is no child labor throughout their supply chain.”

Gap Inc. recognizes this is not an isolated incident, nor is it a Gap-specific problem. Gap is currently working locally in Delhi to respond to the abuses, while also appropriately working with the GMACL and ITGLWF on the broader issues related to protecting children and developing a mature system of industrial relations between independent unions and employers.

Another key component rests in the hands of the government of India, which can and should be enforcing its laws on child labor and bonded labor and aggressively prosecuting employers found in violation of the laws. Through ensuring adequate resources and training for factory inspections, the government of India will send a clear message to the world that it takes protecting children from worst forms of child labor, including bonded child labor, as a priority.

“Other retailers must join Gap in acknowledging there is a problem in the supply chain in India. We do not support corporations jumping ship and moving these jobs to some other country with similar or parallel problems. That’s no solution,” said Darlene Adkins, CLC Coordinator. “Consumers are watching for a good-faith, credible response to ensure decent work for adults and no child labor. Any textile company that tries to cover-up, instead of an honest effort to clean up their abusive use of child labor, will pay a high price with consumers.”

About the Child Labor Coalition

The Child Labor Coalition is a group of more than 30 organizations, representing consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights and labor rights groups, child advocacy groups, and religious and women’s groups.  It was established in 1989, and is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers.  Its mission is to protect working youth and to promote legislation, programs, and initiatives to end child labor exploitation in the United States and abroad.