You are not logged in to Prodigits. Please register or login.

Subject: Child labour on Nestl farms
Replies: 5 Views: 290

vampboy 31.01.21 - 03:58am
Children younger than 15 continue to work at cocoa farms connected to Nestle, more than a decade after the food company promised to end the use of child labour in its supply chain.

Multiple reports have documented the widespread use of child labour in cocoa production, as well as slavery and child trafficking, throughout West African plantations, on which Nestle and other major chocolate companies rely.

According to the 2010 documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, the children working are typically 12 to 15 years old. The Fair Labor Association has criticised Nestle for not carrying out proper checks.

Ivory Coast is the worlds largest producer of cocoa, the raw ingredient that makes chocolate. The industry is estimated to be worth close to 60 billion a year.

A 2016 study published in Fortune Magazine concluded that approximately 2.1 million children in several West African countries still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa, noting that the average farmer in Ghana in the 201314 growing season made just 84 per day, and farmers in Ivory Coast a mere 50 well below the World Banks new 1.90 per day standard for extreme poverty. On efforts to reduce the issue, former secretary general of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries, Sona Ebai, commented Best-case scenario, were only doing 10 of whats needed.

In 2019, Nestle announced that they couldn't guarantee that their chocolate products were free from child slave labour, as they could trace only 49 of their purchasing back to the farm level. The Washington Post noted that the commitment taken in 2001 to eradicate such practices within four years had not been kept, neither at the due deadline of 2005, nor within the revised deadlines of 2008 and 2010, and that the result was not likely to be achieved for 2020 either * +

vampboy 31.01.21 - 04:02am
So what should be expected from Nestle? Should they try harder to stop child labor on the cocoa plants operated by these companies?
What about families who's main source of income is derived from the joint labor of a nuclear family?
Wouldn't prohibiting child labor increase unemployment rates in an already poverty stricken region?
Would you buy nestle anyway knowing that the chocolate could be the fruits of a child labour deprived of basic rights? * +

vampboy 31.01.21 - 04:06am
* +

sisfreak2017 31.01.21 - 04:21am
Almost all big companies do similar things. That's why they're shifting production to countries where they can pay the workers very low amounts to produce the same thing. The same applies to taking advantage of poor countries by sending their electronic waste there to be recycled for jack sh*t. * +

vampboy 31.01.21 - 04:43am
The problem is that a vast majority of the world's cocoa beans come from four western African countries. The climate has to be both hot and humid and it has to be a tropical region around the Equator. It's not so much as Nestle willingly seeking out poor countries to grow cocoa from, but rather it's the only choice they really have.
You can say the wage is definitely very low; but aren't wages and working conditions dictated by national regulatory bodies as opposed to Nestle? How far can Nestle can really go and ensure children aren't working on the farms anyway. * +

vampboy 1.02.21 - 01:06pm
One of the things people fail to realize is the extent to which sexual abuse takes place with children working as laborers in a society filled with adults.

4 million children in Pakistan are currently working as child laborers. 1.8 million kids live on the streets and make a living doing the likes of picking up garbage from the streets and recycling them. Cocoa plantation workers undergo equally harsh treatment under the scorching sun.

And here's the harsh part; from amongst 25 different countries Child laborers flagged abuse and sexual violence as biggest fears in work. Children are regularly sexually exploited; many even sell themselves just to make enough pennies to support their families for a day.

Child labor is part of a much bigger crueler problem. *

+ refresh
+ my page
+ functions
3 search
4 submit a reply
+ bookmark
8 General Chat Forum
9 Forum Index

Custom Search