Companies reap profits from humanitarian projects

Taken from PSLweb.org.

For the past two years, the Canadian government has had knowledge of gross workers’ rights and child-labor law violations by companies contracted to help with post-tsunami construction in Indonesia. The violations of international labor conventions include using child labor and neglecting to pay workers. There have also been allegations of human trafficking.

The project has been funded by Canadian taxpayers and carried out by the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian Red Cross. Alex Asselin, a spokesperson for the CIDA, stated that the agency learned that workers were not being paid in April 2008. In 2007, a CRC employee reported dangerous working conditions and the withholding of salaries by contractors.

The CRC appointed Ernst and Young, an accounting firm, to look into the allegations but so far has refused to release the full report. Under capitalism, even humanitarian projects are characterized by the never-ending drive for profit at the expense of workers.