Factory probed for recruiting underage girls
Print Edition
AN electronic equipment factory in Shenzhen is being investigated for recruiting underage workers from poverty-stricken areas in southwestern Sichuan Province.
The Shenzhen Click Technology Co Ltd which manufactures power and magnetic components, reportedly employed children aged around 12 from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.
In November, the company hired 69 children, mostly girls from the Yi ethnic group, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported. The paper quoted a company staff as saying: “Girls are more obedient and easy to manage.”
The underage workers were paid 2,000 yuan (US$330) per month for a 12-hour shift.
Most of them installed batteries while a few older ones did risky work like tin soldering, the paper quoted a staff, identified only as A Xin, as saying. A Xin suggested that child labor was common at the company.
“Some children here have worked for two or three years, and more kept coming,” he said. “But I never expected them to find so many girls at once. They look like they are around 12 years of age, some even younger than 10.
“They are forced to leave home at such a young age. What a pity,” he added.
The girls claimed most of them were in the fifth or sixth grade, but were told to tell others they were 17 or 18, the newspaper reported.
When community labor officials visited the factory last Friday and asked them their age, they insisted they were 18 but could not say which year they were born. They also did not have any identification cards, which are issued to people over the age of 16 in China, the newspaper reported.
While the girls toiled, the paper claimed that the company’s HR manager, a man surnamed Zeng and an unnamed middleman pocketed 10,000 yuan by claiming overtime.
During the unannounced check by officials, Zeng was seen making a phone call asking other managers to take the girls away from the workshop. Law enforcement officials saw the girls running to the dormitory, the newspaper claimed.
Zeng first claimed they were recruited but later insisted that a professional HR company got them. Much later, he admitted they were brought by a middleman.
The girls said a local villager, called Heirishichi, told them they could find work at an industrial park at Shenzhen’s Baoan District after they celebrated their New Year in November according to Yi calendar.
“There are 130 of us. Nearly 70 of them were hired by Click while 60 others went elsewhere,” one of the girls said.
They said all of them lived in a dormitory building inside the industrial zone with eight of them sharing a room.
The newspaper found their lunch was a five-yuan meal set bought from a street vendor.
But they were not abducted or sold. Instead, they said their parents agreed to let them go to Shenzhen for work because they were poor.
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