Child Exploitation in depth
Everything you need to know
The world’s most popular food and household companies are selling food, cosmetics and other everyday staples containing palm oil tainted by shocking human rights abuses in Indonesia, with children as young as eight working in hazardous conditions.
For Amnesty International’s report, The great palm oil scandal, Amnesty spoke to 120 workers who work on palm plantations owned by two Wilmar subsidiaries and three Wilmar suppliers in Kalimantan and Sumatra in Indonesia. Singapore-based agri-business Wilmar, is the world’s biggest palm oil grower.
The investigation exposed a wide range of abuses, most shockingly, children as young as eight doing hazardous, hard physical work, sometimes dropping out of school to help their parents on the plantation. The report also revealed:
- Women forced to work long hours under the threat of having their pay cut, paid below minimum wage – earning as little as US$2.50 a day in extreme cases – and kept in insecure employment without pensions or health insurance
- Workers suffering severe injuries from paraquat, an acutely toxic chemical still used in the plantations despite being banned in the EU and by Wilmar itself
- Workers being made to work outdoors without adequate safety equipment despite the risks of respiratory damage from hazardous levels of pollution caused by forest fires during August to October 2015
- Workers having to work long hours to meet ridiculously high targets, some of which involve highly physically demanding tasks such as operating heavy manual equipment to cut fruit from trees 20 meters tall
Attempting to meet targets can leave workers in significant physical pain, and they also face a range of penalties for things like not picking up palm fruits on the ground and picking unripe fruit.
A 14-year-old boy who harvests and carries palm fruits on a plantation owned by Wilmar told Amnesty International that he dropped out of school when we was 12 because his father was sick and unable to meet his work targets. He said his 10 and 12-year-old siblings also work on the plantation after school:
“I have helped my father every day for about two years. I studied until sixth grade in school. I left school to help my father because he couldn’t do the work anymore. He was sick…I regret leaving school. I would have liked to have gone to school to become smarter. I would like to become a teacher.”
The physically demanding and tiring work can cause physical damage for young children. A 10-year-old boy who also dropped out of school to help his father, who works for a Wilmar supplier, when he was eight said he gets up at 6.00 AM to gather and carry away loose palm fruit. He said he works for six hours every day, except Sunday.
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