KUALA LUMPUR – IOI Corporation Bhd will undergo an audit on its labour policies and working conditions at its palm oil plantations after a June 30 report alleging forced labour conditions.
The company in a statement yesterday said that the audit will take place in the following months supervised by “one of its customers and assisted by a reputable international labour rights consulting firm”. The customer and firm were not named.
“The audit will cover a broad spectrum of our plantation operating units and will seek to ascertain any non-compliance with our labour policies or unsatisfactory working conditions faced by our 16,000 workers in Malaysia.
“IOI views the findings in the report seriously and will strive to further improve the implementation of our labour policies as well as the working conditions in our plantations.”
IOI added that it is committed to making ex-gratia payments to workers who were charged fees before introducing a no-recruitment fees policy in 2017.
It said the 918 workers eligible for the payment had been paid by last month.
The company also said its workers are guaranteed to receive the minimum wage, and it also has a process for them to verify their working hours and calculate their wages.
“IOI has been working with a number of local and international labour rights experts and NGOs during the last five years to monitor the implementation of our labour policies. Reports by some of these experts and NGOs have been complimentary, while others have been critical, like this Finnwatch report.
“The critical reports have caused some demoralisation and disappointment among our 2,500 supervisory employees in the plantation operating units who have put in a lot of effort to ensure the proper implementation of our company’s labour policies and practices.
“Nevertheless, we will continue to further engage, raise awareness and train our supervisory employees on responsible business conducts and address grievances swiftly.”
IOI said the report did not “differentiate between recruitment fees and collection of illegal monies from the workers at their source country”, which is beyond the company’s jurisdiction.
“Reimbursement of illegally collected monies would only encourage further illegal collection of money from workers and could violate anti-bribery and anti-corruption regulations. IOI has reported the matter to the Indian High Commission for formal investigation and has suspended the recruitment agency (which was alleged to be affiliated to the unknown person) as well as the recruitment of workers from India.”
On June 30, Helsinki-based Finnwatch published a report alleging that Indian migrant workers at an IOI plantation are subject to poor living conditions, high recruitment fees and earn below the minimum wage.
According to the report, the investigation was conducted through video interviews with seven workers as well as obtaining photographs of their living conditions and various documents sent by IOI.
The seven workers are all from India and based at Mekassar Estate, one of IOI’s 103 plantation operating units in Malaysia. – The Vibes, July 3, 2021
