China promises action on slave labour claims

Hongtong (China), June 16: China has ordered an urgent investigation into a slave labour scandal in a poor part of the country where poverty and unbridled growth have made hardship commonplace.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security will send a team to central China, where state media have said as many as 1,000 minors may have been forced to work in slave-like conditions, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

''The team will find out the truth as soon as possible, and we will go all out to rescue the workers who had been forced to work as slaves in the brick kilns,'' Xinhua late yesterday quoted Sun Baoshu, deputy minister of the labour ministry, as saying.

''The criminal offenders will be dealt with to safeguard the legal interests of the workers,'' Sun said.

But local residents and even state media have been pointing to official complicity in the unfolding scandal.

State television has reported owners of primitive brick kilns ran their operations like prisons in Shanxi and Henan provinces, with thugs who beat the children at will and fierce dogs to help maintain control.

One owner accidentally killed a child with a shovel and buried the body at night, state TV said.

Some of the workers, mostly young males, were shown to have festering wounds on their black feet and around their waists, presumably from burns from the kilns where they worked without receiving any pay.

Claiming that local officials turned a blind eye, the wife of one owner of a brick kiln now in detention said that her husband, Wang Bingbing, bore only part of the responsibility.

Prime responsibility, Zhang Mei told Reuters, lay with a sub-contractor who had found the workers and controlled them directly.

Local officials knew about the kiln in the Hongtong area in Shanxi province but turned a blind eye to conditions there, she said.

''The officials said that we were illegal and so they came for money but they didn't do any more than that,'' she said.

''They wanted the money.''

Reuters>