Det multinationale mine- og råvareselskab Glencore beskyldes for at udnytte børnearbejdere i en congolesisk mine og for indirekte at yde betaling til paramilitære drabsmænd i Colombia. Det fremgår af hemmelige filmoptagelser.
Undercover filming showed children as young as ten working in the Glencore-owned Tilwezembe mining concession in the DR Congo, BBC online reports Monday.
And sales documents show a Glencore subsidiary made payments to the suspected associates of paramilitaries in Colombia, Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg denied both claims.
He said to the BBC that the company had “never dealt, never paid, never met the paramilitaries in all our years in Colombia” and did “not profit from child labour in any part of the world.”
Panorama secretly filmed miners climbing down mineshafts 46 m deep without any safety or breathing equipment to dig copper in the Tilwezembe concession. Many of the miners were under 18. One boy said he was ten years old. International law prohibits anyone under 18 working in a mine.
Although Glencore says it stopped operating at the mine in 2008, because of the collapse in the price of copper, it still owns the concession.
Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg said the mine had been taken over by local workers without its permission, BBC online reports.
