To Jadrew et al: "intl. conference picked out De Beers for massive child labour indifference"
I believe the following is a truly sad and revealing story about corporate responsibility, or the lack thereof, by DB. The following information from the Mail & Guardian (an independent SA newspaper) reveals a side of De Beers that I'm sure the Canadian Government will also find very interesting. The following information is available at the Mail & Guardian Web site at mg.co.za
This is a truly sad reflection on a company that has made billions of dollars/rand and that has tried to force its way into a mine that it didn't find. What right does it have to do so?? See the comments by Vaughn and others that reveal what foreign investors think of DB's role in this, and the continuing effect that will have. As those people have said, DB is souring the market for international investment in SA mining. What does DB care? Apparently they don't. They grew rich during the time of apartheid, they grew accustomed to influencing the course of government in the old South Africa, and now they have attempted to perpetuate those old ways by willfully siding with a group of "heirs" to try and force foreign investment out of South Africa ... they view it as a "fight in their own backyard".
Perhaps, if it isn't already clear by the actions of the DB representatives on this group, the following will explain the true meaning of the "shadow campaign":
The following is quoted from the Mail&Guardian:
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ELECTRONIC MAIL&GUARDIAN
Johannesburg, South Africa. November 4, 1997
JEAN SUTHERLAND, the *Namibian*
De Beers 'blind eye' to child gem polishers
An international labour conference picks out De Beers for indifference towards the massive use of child labour by Asian gem cutters who buy diamonds from the South African group.
THE BIGGEST player in the world diamond trade, De
Beers, has been accused of "at best" turning a blind
eye to the "extensive use" of child labour in the
diamond polishing industry.
Unionists lobbying at the International Conference on
Child Labour in the Norwegian capital of Oslo
described it as the "dirty end of the diamond and
precious stone business."
In documentation released to journalists, the
International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU)
noted that the majority of the world's biggest diamonds
were traded through De Beers' marketing arm, the
Central Selling Organisation. In addition, De Beers
was cited as the second largest supplier of diamonds
to India, the world's biggest diamond and gemstone
cutting centre.
The union confederation listed Namibia as one of the
world's major diamond producers, along with regional
neighbours South Africa, Botswana and Angola, as well as Australia, Zaire and Russia.
But while the international gem industry generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, "tens of thousands of children" in India worked in "cramped, filthy and dangerous conditions" for poverty wages, the ICFTU said.
Asked if diamonds mined in Namibia were being processed by child labourers in India, Jef Hoymans, general secretary of the Universal Alliance of Diamond Workers, said once the diamonds reached the sub-continent there was no way of telling which country they had originated from.
Hoymans said Namibian diamonds were generally "top of the market" and as a result were more likely to be sent to Antwerp or Thailand for processing.
But, it was possible, the unionist told The Namibian, that smaller samples of precious stones from Namibia ended up "being shined and shaped" by child labourers.
Nonetheless, Hoyman's emphasised, De Beers, as a multinational, had a
corporate international responsibility.
Video footage, entitled Precious Lives, which shows the extensive use of child labour in the diamond polishing business, was screened by BBC TV last week.
A member of the Universal Alliance of Diamond workers, Yamina de Laet, told The Namibian they had filmed children as young as six-years-old working on dangerous polishing wheels, as well as "people living and sleeping at their workplaces and trash, human faeces and industry waste clogging the open sewers that run between the warren of gemstone shops."
De Laet said that at one factory almost half the
workers were of "questionable age".
The ICFTU said that while the diamond and gemstone
industry generated hundreds of millions of dollars in
profit around the world last year, the workers who cut
and polished the precious stones "often receive
poverty wages and work in conditions which leave
them with lung disease or half-blinded."
Further, tens of thousands of children worked full time,
denied the chance of going to school. "Overall the
labour costs in the diamond industry amount to just
one per cent of total costs," De Laet said.
Asked by The Namibian about De Beers' response to the child labour
accusations, De Laet said that in correspondence with her union, the multinational had maintained that the prevalence of child labour in Indian diamond cutting was slightly over three per cent of the total workforce, estimated at around 24 000 children, mainly in the "traditional" rather than the "modern sector" of the industry.
However, she said while De Beers had eventually admitted there was a child labour problem in the sector in India, they had claimed that they did not use cutters who exploited children as labourers.
But, asked De Laet, where are the diamonds coming from, "they're certainly not just dropping out of the heavens."
The unionist added that evidence at the gem polishing and cutting work sites they had visited had pointed to work being done for De Beers.
The multinational apparently could also not rule out the possibility that the cutters they used were sub-contracting work to outfits which used child labour. -- The Namibian/Misa, November 4, 1997.
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Nempela |
