| The Observer quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their families in Indian states such as Bihar and West Bengal and would not be allowed to leave until they had repaid that fee.Some, working as long as 16 hours a day to hand-sew clothing, said they were not being paid at the unidentified Gap supplier because their employer said they were still trainees.
The Observer quoted one boy identified only as Jivaj as saying that child employees who cried or did not work hard enough were hit with a rubber pipe or had oily cloths stuffed into their mouths.
The paper said the sweatshop, or “derelict industrial unit,” that it found during its investigation in New Delhi was “smeared in filth, the corridors flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.”
The Observer printed a photograph of one of the child workers, and British Broadcasting Corp. television broadcast what it said was footage of the youngsters taken at the sweatshop by an unidentified German TV crew. |
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Now this just ticks me off big-time. It seems that a corporation as big as Gap is wouldn’t have to resort to such means to produce top-quality clothing. Of course, I don’t buy from them. But if I did, I would boycott them instantly. I thought the main reason corporations outsourced to India was to take advantage of the high-intellect individuals out there?! (Or is that just naivety?) Well, it seems that they only outsource to India to get their products made as cheaply as possible. (Of course you already knew that.)
Now we all know how cheap.
