In the News

Malawi's child tobacco labourers suffer nicotine poisoning

The World Today
08/26/2009

ELEANOR HALL: Multinational tobacco companies are coming under pressure today for their policy of buying tobacco from farms that exploit children.

An international study has revealed that children working in Malawi's tobacco fields are absorbing up a huge amount of nicotine, the equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day.

Some of these children are less than five and they work for less than 2 cents an hour in oppressive conditions.

Jess Hill has this report.

Malawi's child tobacco pickers 'being poisoned by nicotine'

The Guardian
08/24/2009

By David Smith

Children in Malawi who are forced to work as tobacco pickers are exposed to nicotine poisoning equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day, an investigation has found.

Child labourers as young as five are suffering severe health problems from a daily skin absorption of up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine, according to the international children's organisation Plan.

Malawi Child Pickers ‘Exposed’ to 50 Cigarettes a Day

Bloomberg News
08/24/2009

By Paul Richardson

Child tobacco pickers in Malawi, Africa’s biggest producer of the burley variety of the crop, are being exposed to nicotine poisoning equivalent to 50 cigarettes a day, a children’s rights organization said.

At least 78,000 children, some as young as five, work on tobacco estates in the southern African country, Plan International, a Woking, England-based agency said in a report on its Web site today. They work for up to 12 hours a day and are paid as little as 1 penny (2 cents) an hour, it said.

Malawi child tobacco workers exposed to nicotine

AP
08/24/2009

By Raphael Tenthani

Children picking tobacco in the fields of Malawi for consumers far beyond the African country's borders are being poisoned as they absorb up to two cigarette packs' worth of nicotine each day, a children's rights organization said Monday,

The "extremely high levels of nicotine poisoning" produces not only nausea, headaches, dizziness, difficulty in breathing and other symptoms but "long-lasting changes in brain structure and function," London-based Plan International said in a report.

Bitter treat consumer issue

Otago Daily Times
08/20/2009

Child slavery is endemic in the chocolate industry, Geoff White, the New Zealand general manager for Trade Aid, says.

The recent addition of palm oil to Cadbury's chocolate and the implied threat this poses to rainforests and the Indonesian orang-utan has raised a large amount of media attention and consumer backlash.

As it should.

But while concern for the environment and animals is justified, it is unfortunate that a far bigger scandal involving much of the chocolate sold in this country continues to fly under the radar.

General strike widely followed in Niger

AFP
07/30/2009

A 24-hour strike call to press public sector claims for a 50 percent pay rise in Niger was widely followed Thursday in the capital Niamey, trade union sources said.

"The strike is being well followed, even if there are places where people are working," Amadou Harouna Maiga of the USTN, a federation of trade unions of Niger, told AFP.

Administrative offices, banks and many shops were closed. However, public transport was running normally in Niamey and traffic levels were normal, an AFP correspondent reported...

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