BIG NAMES IN FOOTBALL LINKED TO CHILD LABOUR IN INDIA
(from: Cristian Aid's report, may 1997)
Indian children - some as young as seven - are routinely stitching footballs for export to Britain, according to a new report published by Christian Aid on May 1997. Researchers from Christian Aid and the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) also found boys as young as ten employed in small workshops manufacturing items such as boxing and cricket gloves for export. Tanneries supplying leather to some of the main sports-goods companies exporting to Britain were found to employ children illegally in hazardous conditions.
Christian Aid's report, A Sporting Chance, argues that British retailers and importers should work with Indian manufacturers to improve adult pay and conditions and to phase out child labour. It also urges the new Labour government and its Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, to play an active part in developing high ethical standards for corporate conduct in international trade.
"A consumer boycott or switching suppliers is not the answer because lost business could mean lost jobs for adults and could drive vulnerable children into more dangerous and degrading work," says Martin Cottingham, the report's co-author. "Big companies like Mitre, Umbro and Adidas have the money and the muscle to persuade their existing suppliers to implement codes of conduct pledging basic minimum labour standards, with independent monitoring to ensure compliance."
Among the children featured in A Sporting Chance is 11-year-old Sonia, who earns 12 pence for stitching an official Eric Cantona souvenir football which sells in Manchester United's club shop for þ9.99. Another child, 12-year-old Pintu, worked six hours a day unpaid to help his father in a tannery which sells leather to an Indian company whose clients include Alfred Reader - official supplier of cricket balls for England Test Matches.
Football manufacturers in Pakistan agreed earlier this year to a phased eradication of child labour, and Christian Aid wants India's sports-goods industry to come up with a similar initiative - addressing not only football production and child labour but also adult working conditions and the full range of sporting goods produced.
"Adult pay and conditions receive less attention in the West than the emotive issue of child labour," says Martin Cottingham. "But the insecurity and low wages of adult employment are at the heart of why so many children are forced to work in the first place."
For more information or to order photographs or Beta footage please contact Christian Aid's press office:
Martin Cottingham on +44-171-523 2419 (w) or +44-181-473 3201 (h);
Andrew Simms on +44-171-523 2427 (w) or +44-171-720 5389 (h);
Sarah Stewart on +44-171-523 2416 (w) or +44-181-883 5841 (h).
Press office general direct line on +44-171-5230240
