Publication-Date: 10.09.2000 Publication: SMP
Author: Martin Wong
McDonald's denial angers activists
Byline: Martin Wong
McDONALD'S should start rehabilitation programmes for children from a Shenzhen
toy factory after the fast-food giant cut ties with it in the wake of child
labour revelations, rights groups say.
They are angry that an audit by the corporation following a Sunday Morning Post
investigation only found bad working practices and incomplete employee records.
The groups say McDonald's should help educate the children, who say they were
shunted out of the City Toys after the disclosures made in the Post's report.
The assistant director of the Christian Industrial Committee, Eli Chan Ka-wai,
said the group was furious at McDonald's insistence that its probe found no
evidence of child labour at the factory and four affiliated factories nearby.
All are subsidiaries of Hong Kong-based Pleasure Tech Holdings.
"This is not a sincere act to be taken by a giant corporation that has
integrity." he said.
"There is concrete, solid evidence that we and the media have collected on
child labour exploitation. We have the names of the children, their addresses,
how they were employed.
"But the company refuses to admit it and has never contacted us.
"They seem happy with `announced visits' to the plant and do not
demonstrate any sincerity and responsibility for the fact that underage workers
were sacked and evidence removed to escape investigation," Mr Chan said.
"It simply cut the contract with City Toys to evade its responsibility over
labour abuses. It is intolerable."
Mr Chan said that last year a 15-year-old boy was found working in a Dongguan
factory making footwear for a transnational company.
He said the company immediately apologised and promised to educate to the boy
until he was 16.
He added that in similar fashion to claims made against City Toys, the boy had
used a fake ID card of which the factory was aware.
Apo Leong, executive director of the Asian Monitor Resource Centre, said there
had been similar cases in Bangladesh.
"After the incident, many child labourers were expelled from the factories
and were loitering in streets.
"With the help of some non-governmental organisations, including the
International Labour Organisation, schools were set up there to help the
children, with funding from the factories," he said.
Pressure groups have also called for compensation, overtime and travel
allowances for all the sacked workers.
They claimed City Toys was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of lax
monitoring by transnational corporations in the mainland.