CDC among banks accused of failing to safeguard Congolese workers
UK development bank CDC and three other European lenders have been accused of failing to protect workers from exposure to dangerous pesticides and paying “extreme poverty” wages on palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Human Rights Watch said the CDC group, along with Belgium's BIO, DEG from Germany, and FMO of the Netherlands, had failed to properly oversee its investments in Feronia, one of Africa’s largest palm oil companies.
The banks have invested £77 million ($100 million) in the loss-making company since 2013.
“These banks can play an important role promoting development, but they are sabotaging their mission by failing to ensure the company they finance respects the rights of its workers and communities on the plantations,” said Luciana Téllez Chávez, author of the HRW report into the abuses, published on Monday. “The banks should insist that Feronia remedies the abuses and commits to a concrete plan to end them.” HRW researchers interviewed more than 200 people, including 100 workers at three plantations in the north of the country, as well as Feronia’s former CEO and PHC’s director general.
Two-thirds of the workers exposed to pesticides, aged between 25 and 49, told researchers they had become impotent since starting work. They described skin irritation, pustules, blisters, eye problems and blurred vision, symptoms described in scientific literature as health consequences of pesticide exposure.
In a statement, a spokesman for CDC said the group was committed to resolving the issues highlighted by HRW. The statement said that, in the past six years, wages had doubled at Feronia and that $10 million had been spent on medical and educational facilities, clean water and housing. The workforce is unionised and employees and their families get free healthcare, added the spokesman, with the average worker earning $3.30 a day, as agreed with unions – which he said was higher than a nurse or teacher would earn locally.
All four development banks were contacted for comment, but Bio, DEG and FMO referred the Guardian to the CDC for a response.
