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Apple faces pollution, poor work safety charges
By siliconindia
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Friday, 21 January 2011, 15:20 IST |
1 Comments
Bangalore: A coalition of Chinese green groups accused Apple for negligible corporate oversight of its suppliers causing over pollution and work safety issues that affect dozens of its factory workers in China.
Releasing its report, Chinese Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) accused Apple of serious malpractices in its supply chain.
Apple was placed last in the list of 29 multinational technology companies based on their responsiveness and transparency to health and environmental concerns in China. The Beijing-based nonprofit group released a 26-page report called "The Other Side of Apple" which shows HP, BT, Alcatel-Lucent, Vodafone, Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp and Hitachi as highly ranked ones.
Although many other technology companies such as Sony, LG, Nokia, SingTel, and Ericsson were accused of not taking enough steps to correct the problems, none was criticized as badly as Apple.
The report included cases such as poisoning of workers at Lianjian Technology, suicides at the Apple supplier Foxconn last year, and the humiliation of female works at Dafu Computers, a subsidiary of Taiwan Mobile.
Apple was quick to respond to the accusations and told Reuters that it has rigorous auditing regime and all its suppliers were monitored and investigated regularly.