KL Kepong implicated in horrific allegations in Indonesian plantations

I just received my weekly magazine "Bloomberg BusinessWeek". In it a horrible story about abuse of workers in Indonesian plantations. One company specifically mentioned is KL Kepong. The story is available on the internet and can be found here. It is based on extensive research by Bloomberg that took nine months to complete. It is a long story, but I hope that the reader of my blog has time to go through it all.

Some excerpts:


..... As it’s grown, the palm oil industry has drawn scrutiny from environmental activists in Europe and the U.S. They decry the destruction of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia to support oil palm expansion, which threatens the natural habitats of endangered species such as pygmy elephants and Sumatran tigers. The human costs of the palm oil boom, however, have been largely overlooked. A nine-month investigation of the industry, including interviews with workers at or near 12 plantations on Borneo and Sumatra—two islands that hold 96 percent of Indonesia’s palm oil operations—revealed widespread abuses of basic human rights. Among the estimated 3.7 million workers in the industry are thousands of child laborers and workers who face dangerous and abusive conditions. Debt bondage is common, and traffickers who prey on victims face few, if any, sanctions from business or government officials.

.... Interviews with former workers as well as statements recorded by local nongovernmental organizations reveal a tragic underside of KLK’s supply chain. These workers tell of being defrauded, abused, and held captive by representatives of a labor management firm called CV Sinar Kalimantan. Their claims of fraud are substantiated by affiliates of the contractors, as well as by the labor contracts themselves, copies of which were obtained by Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

..... At PT 198, a plantation near Berau owned by top KLK shareholder Batu Kawan, workers entered a system of tightly controlled forced labor, according to Adam and other alleged victims. At least 95 workers were held at the plantation for up to two years. At night they were locked in stifling, windowless barracks. An environmental NGO, Menapak, later reported that they were fed small portions of salted fish and rice, which several said were often weevil-infested. A truck with fresh water came once a month, but that supply would last no more than a week; workers pulled most water for cooking, cleaning, and drinking from a stagnant ditch that ran alongside the barracks.



As far as I know, the story has not been reported in the Malaysian media, if that is indeed the case then that would be very disappointing, although not unexpected.


Another, more old, story about Indonesia in general can be found here:

"The Perfect Fascist City. Take a Train in Jakarta" by Andre Vltchek.

According to my sources, this story is largely correct, but here and there exaggerated. Corruption seems to be on the rise in Indonesia. It seems that the economy is doing quite well, but large chunks of the gains end in the pockets of only a few.