KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The world’s biggest palm oil processor Wilmar has launched fresh measures to improve conditions of thousands of children living on its plantations, but campaigners said on Wednesday that it was not doing enough to tackle widespread use of child labour. Wilmar was targeted in an Amnesty International probe last year which found children as young as eight were working in “hazardous” conditions on plantations run by the Singapore-based firm and its suppliers in Indonesia. Wilmar pledged to upgrade and improve access to schools in and around its palm oil estates last week, in a written child protection policy that it said was a first for the industry. “The whole goal is to ensure children in our community are taken care of in the best way,” Wilmar’s group sustainability general manager, Perpetua George, said on Wednesday. “The issues cropping up a lot really are around the care and well-being of children,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Indonesia. The policy would protect some 10,000 children on Wilmar’s plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Africa, she said. But Amnesty’s Lauren Armistead said it was “disappointing” that Wilmar failed to address the root cause of child labour. Rights groups have said parents who harvest palm fruit often have to seek help from their children, who also live on the plantation, to meet firms’ high harvesting quotas. “The quota and penalty system ... is the reason why parents take their children to work. That has not been recognised at all in this child protection policy,” campaigner Armistead said by phone from London. The Amnesty investigation also alleged other labour abuses, including working long hours for low pay without adequate safety equipment. It found at least nine global consumer companies were sourcing from these Indonesian plantations. Over 1.5 million children are thought to be working in tobacco, rubber and oil palm plantations in Indonesia, according to the International Labour Organization. Reporting by Beh Lih Yi @behlihyi, Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org
Wilmar, the largest palm oil processor in the world, has produced what it claims is the first written child protection policy in the sector, including pledges to improve schools close to its estates and to increase access to education. Last year, Amnesty International found children as young as eight were working under “hazardous” conditions on the Singapore-based company’s Indonesian plantations. Wilmar claims that the policy will protect 10,000 children in Africa, Indonesia and Malaysia, but Amnesty stated that the proposals failed to deal with the root causes of child labour.