snowmails
Have you ever wondered, as I have, how it can ever be possible to buy brand new clothes in supermarkets for £3 for a pair of jeans? Or £4 for a shirt or less? Well one of the answers lies somewhere in darkest Bangladesh.
Channel 4 News has carried out an investigation over four months trying to track how garments get from Bangladesh's A to Britain's B. The B in this case is Tesco, who have an ethical policy of which they are proud.
Indeed they even audit the factories that supply them. But as we shall reveal tonight this is not the whole story.
We have secretly filmed inside four factories belonging to two established Tesco suppliers and have discovered child workers there making Tesco's own label 'Florence and Fred' clothing.
And what's more it turns out that Tesco did not even know that two of these four factories were manufacturing their clothes. They have therefore never visited these two factories and hence ethically audited them.
Both suppliers and Tesco have denied all the allegations and there is no suggestion that Tesco ever knew about any child workers. In fact, the supermarket said it abhors child labour and said it's at the front of industry efforts to stamp it out.
But this report raises serious questions about Tesco's ability to enforce the ethical standards it claims to hold.
Tesco are less than happy at our revelations. They have had lawyers crawling all over the allegations. But we shall be airing the film at seven and you can make up your own mind.
special report
No comments:
Post a Comment