Pepsi sugar draws ire
Chit Samlot
Pepsi sugar draws ire
Mon, 25 November 2013
The Phnom Penh Post
A man maintains crops in a sugarcane field in Kandal province’s Saang district in 2011. Heng Chivoan
Investors in drinks giant PepsiCo have filed a shareholders resolution urging the company to account for alleged land-rights violations in Cambodia.
The 14 shareholders – including Oxfam – are increasing the pressure on PepsiCo following Coca-Cola’s pledge earlier this month of “zero tolerance” towards land grabs.
An Oxfam investigation last month found that PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Associated British Foods (ABF) and their franchises have been linked to violent sugar-related land grabs in Cambodia. PepsiCo and ABF had yet to address the allegations made in Oxfam’s report Nothing Sweet About It, the charity said in a statement.
In the report, Oxfam cited a 2006 land-grab case in Sre Ambel district, Koh Kong province, where two companies belonging to Thailand’s Kon Kaen Sugar Co Ltd, which sells sugar to franchises that produce products for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, were responsible for evicting 456 families from their land concession.
“The pressure is only increasing on PepsiCo to address the realities of its supply chain,” Judy Beals, manager for Oxfam’s Behind the Brands Campaign, said in the statement.
“The company is leaving itself open to immense risks if it fails to tackle land conflicts in areas where it sources ingredients. Coca-Cola has already identified these risks and made promises to address them. The question investors should ask is: Why is PepsiCo so far behind?”
PepsiCo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The resolution will be voted on at PepsiCo’s annual general meeting early next year.
“As shareholders we want to know what PepsiCo is doing to ensure its suppliers are behaving responsibly and preventing land conflicts from undermining its reputation and operations,” Beals added.
Complementing the resolution, more than 250,000 people have signed petitions supporting Oxfam’s campaign, which have been delivered to PepsiCo’s bottling plants in the US.
Cambodia’s sugar exports reached $13 million in 2011, with about 90 per cent of these exports going to the European Union under its Everything But Arms trade initiative, which allows duty-free imports from the world’s poorest countries.
Villagers ‘paid to log’ lost land
Factory rejects order to rehire 19 workers
Mon, 25 November 2013
The Phnom Penh Post
SL Garment factory workers clash with police during a rally in Phnom Penh earlier this month. Pha Lina
Flouting a government order, representatives of SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd yesterday refused to rehire 19 union representatives and activists during a meeting with the Ministry of Labour.
Rehiring the 19 has been the key sticking point in ending the three-month-old strike, which erupted into violence two weeks ago today in an incident that left an uninvolved bystander killed by a police bullet.
The order to rehire the workers – all active members of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) – came just days after the shooting.
“The employers at SL strongly refused to accept the 19 workers back,” said Sat Sakmoth, secretary of state at the Labour Ministry who attended the four-hour meeting. “I tried my best to explain to them that we will send the case to court now because of their decision.”
Joseph Kee Leung Lee, director of SL International Holdings, declined to comment after the meeting last night, telling a Post reporter that he did not attend the meeting and had not spoken with anyone present. SL’s general manager could not be reached last night. News of SL’s refusal to rehire the workers came as no surprise to C.CAWDU vice president Kong Athit.
“That’s not a surprise,” he said yesterday. “C.CAWDU will keep pushing the government, and … buyers and to come to negotiate to settle this.”
If SL, which supplies to Gap Inc and H&M, does not rehire the workers, the strike will continue, Athit said. If they decide to close the factory, they still must compensate the workers, according to the labour law’s stipulations.
Two weeks ago, riot police fired live ammunition into a crowd of hundreds of SL protesters, killing 49-year-old street vendor Eng Sokhom and leaving nine hospitalised with gunshot wounds.
Nearly 40 people were arrested at that time, but only two teens – ages 14 and 17– remain in custody. Attorneys from the Community Legal Education Center, which is providing them with pro-bono legal representation, yesterday filed a request for bail with the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Moen Tola, who heads the NGO’s labour program, said.
The riot occurred during an attempt by strikers and their supporters to march from the SL1 factory in Meanchey district to the home of Prime Minister Hun Sen.
At that time, workers demanded the factory oust Meas Sotha, the SL shareholder who hired armed military police to stand guard inside the factory. The act, C.CAWDU representatives argued, was a move to intimidate unionised workers.
Since the strike began, officials from the labour ministry and Phnom Penh City Hall have facilitated several fruitless negotiation sessions between SL management and C.CAWDU.
While not surprised by SL’s decision to face court rather than hire back the workers, David Welsh, country director for labour rights group Solidarity Center/ACILS, said the move makes little sense from a business perspective.
“It’s hard to visualise how this will end if [SL] refuses to budge,” Welsh said. “It’s hard to imagine brands would further invest in a company with so many problems.”
Villagers ‘paid to log’ lost land
Mon, 25 November 2013
The Phnom Penh Post
In Ratanakkiri province, an area of forest is being cleared by machinery in an economic land concession. PHOTO SUPPLIED
Local communities that lost their land via economic land concessions to private companies are now being paid by those same firms to illegally fell the trees that once sustained their livelihoods, a group of five advocacy groups contended yesterday.
At a press conference, the NGOs singled out 18 companies they say have been exploiting local villagers who see few alternatives to make ends meet.
Rights group Adhoc, along with the Natural Resources and Wildlife Preservation Organization, the Coalition of Cambodian Farmers Community, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) and the Community Peace Building Network Cambodia, said they would file complaints to the authorities if action was not taken.
“After this appeal, if the government does not take any action, we will file complaints to a judicial institution and the Anti-Corruption Unit against some 100 individuals who are … police, military police, oknhas and business people,” said Chan Soveth, a senior investigator with Adhoc.
Employing local forest communities to illegally fell trees is a new strategy pioneered by tycoon Try Pheap, according to CCHR’s senior natural resources researcher, Chhem Savuth.
“About 80 per cent of the population in Preah Vihear’s Rovieng and Cheb districts [are involved in logging] for the companies, because they think the government does not take measures to prevent it, and if they do not log, the companies will log them all [anyway],” he said.
Last week, the Cambodian Human Rights Task Force reported that Pheap’s companies possessed nearly 70,000 hectares through a number of subsidiaries in order to export luxury timber abroad in breach of Cambodian law. Try Pheap denies the claim and has filed for defamation against two people quoted in the report.
Try Pheap, director of MDS Import-Export Co, Ltd, could not be reached yesterday.
Savoeun said forest land had been sold off to companies at an alarming rate, causing farming communities to lose their incomes and rely on logging for the companies.
“Granting ELCs to the companies effects people’s land, leading those people to lose their occupations and forcing them to log for the companies for survival,” he said.
But despite people being put in this situation, he added, many more were angry and frustrated.
“A people’s movement will occur, even though they know they would be in danger, because the forest crimes bring about climate changes,” he said.
Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said unless clear evidence of wrongdoing was presented, the government would not take action.
“The evidence should be clarified clearly; which official has done something wrong and where. If they just hint, it is just an attack and it is not a measure to help crack down on forest crimes,” he said. “We have clear principles for preserving and conserving the forest, and we will not work with the [NGOs’] appeal,” he said.
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