For Swiss cotton traders is part of Burkina Faso to the most important producers in the world. 250’000 tons of cotton fibre produced in the country per year. What are the amounts at which traders are going, not shown. The Winterthur-based trading company Paul Reinhardt AG has recently purchased between 25’000 and 32’000 tons per year, as said the newspaper “der landbote”. Also the world’s largest cotton trader in the world, the Geneva-based company Louis Dreyfus SA, buys in Burkina Faso.
The Swiss NGO Solidar has published on the weekend, after two years of Research, to create a “cotton report”. He illuminates the dark side of this business. It comes to child labour. According to the report, work in Burkina Faso, 250’000 Five – to seventeen-year-old in the cotton fields, so every fifth child in the growing areas.
According to the solidarity weeding, plowing and sowing for the children, bring in fertilizers and pesticides and help in the harvest. “They work between nine and ten hours per day, mostly free, to support their family that has no money for agricultural personnel”, writes the NGO. Children are paid, then with a Dollar per day.
Without taboos discussed
members of the Swiss Parliament should be aware of these circumstances. The parliamentary group Switzerland-Africa, according to the official directory 41 Federal parliamentarians as members, visited Burkina Faso in February 2018. This national councillor Isabelle Chevalley (GLP, VD), the President of the group confirmed. The invitation of the Swiss Association of trade in raw materials and ship transport (STSA), the lobby organisation of the Swiss commodity traders had pronounced. On a in the local press of Burkina Faso published a photo Chevalley marched in indigenous clothes in front, followed by STSA-Secretary-General Stéphane Graber.
The flights to Burkina had to Faso to pay for the parliamentarians themselves. The STSA financed the stay in the country. Chevalley do not want to say that parliamentarians have participated in the trip.
the members of The Council visited the cotton factory of Sofitex, the cores 85 percent of the country’s harvested cotton and clean before you buy Swiss wholesalers Reinhardt and Dreyfus. Chevalley stated that they had discussed with the Director, without taboos. On the fields, where the children work according to the solidarity, not the parliamentarians. If we had been outside the growing season there, explains the Vaud countries.
GLP national councillor Isabelle Chevalley. Photo: PD
On the issue of child labour is addressed, she says: “In Switzerland, it has had no problems, when kids had to help harvest the potato.” If a child is helping on the weekend, on the field, or horses from a cart span, to go out on the field, one cannot speak of children’s work.
“In the case of child labour, the Problem is not whether there is or not, but how it evolves”, says Chevalley. Burkina Faso have, in fact, “a completely different Problem, namely extremely high electricity prices”. This is the reason why factories could not process the cotton themselves, but they would have to abroad to sell to then import back to an expensive price.
“Cynical statements”
SP-national councillor Cédric Wermuth, also in the group of Switzerland-Africa is called Chevalleys attitude “shocking” and the statements about electricity prices “cynical”. The Aargauer says, the trip he did not take part, but have been repeated in Burkina Faso and maintenance of private contacts. “Not that the children earn a bag of money like we did as children in Freiamt in the case of farmers in the Region.”
In Burkina Faso, it is in part to the systematic use of children under precarious conditions: “families can’t keep up without the money, the children on the water. These are de facto constraints, the European merchant to accept very much, because it pushes up the prices.” This does not mean that all the generations come from precarious conditions, Wermuth.
theme is very present
Also, the Council of States Didier Berberat (SP, NE) is a Member of the parliamentary group. He took part in the trip to Burkina Faso, but more often in the African country. The former foreign Minister, Didier Burkhalter, had given Berberat a controversial mandate as special envoy for the Sahel. Beberat is well networked in Burkina Faso, and exchanges according to their own data regularly with the President on education issues. The Council of States says that he knew the relations of production to a little stresses but: If children’s day-to-day for their parents of the heavy lifting that was something else, as if the Swiss children during the wine harvest mithälfen.
Only last November was the appointed by the Federal Council’s consultative Commission for international cooperation on a working visit in Burkina Faso and the ivory coast. Your President is Old-the Council of States Felix Gutzwiller (FDP, Canton of Zurich). He says: “The cotton production was part of the visit program.” The issue of child labour was present. “Just in the mines, child labour seems to be in Africa,” says Gutzwiller. We’ll talk in the next meeting about the mine standard in Burkina Faso, and about what Switzerland is doing, or can do, to ensure that the rules are adhered to.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 28.01.2019, 20:11 PM
