More than 40,000 children in the Democratic Republic of Congo must assume for kilometers cobalt mining products every day. The work was carried out 12 hours a day to pay a maximum of 2 US dollars or equivalent to Rp 27,000.
One of them is 14 years old orphan named Paul. It has been two years he worked in the mines cobalt. Since then, he regularly sick because of the workload that is not human.
"I can work 24 hours a day. Come early and go home the next morning. Foster mother I want my school. But my father forced me to work in the mines," he said, as indicated on the official website of the institution rights activists Amnesty USA, and collected ColekcolekTekno, Wednesday (01/20/2016).
Exploitation of children become commonplace in Congo. Primarily in cobalt mining industries. The countries in Central Africa is known as the world's largest cobalt producer.
Cobalt for batteries smartphone
Cobalt is used as raw material for lithium batteries on smartphones that we use everyday. Some seasoned vendors such as Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft, indicated using lithium cobalt results of exploitation of children in Congo.
This was revealed by Amnesty International and the research team Afrewatch. They interviewed 87 miners from five cobalt mining industry in Konga.
They also interviewed 18 traders cobalt taking resources from the five mines. One of the biggest is Huayou Cobalt.
Huayou Cobalt to three companies supplying lithium battery components. Each one is Ningbo Shanshan and Tianjin bamo of China, as well as L & F Materials from South Korea.
In 2013 then, the three companies are buying more than 90 million US dollars or equivalent to Rp 1.2 trillion from Huayou Cobalt.
Inequality welfare
Then, what about smartphone vendors who enjoy the final process of cobalt? their profits each reach tens of billions of dollars per year.
Far from the maximum wage 2 dollars received by children in the Congo. A year only, at best they scooped 712 US dollars or equivalent to Rp 9.9 million.
Inequality between the welfare of children in Konga with smartphone vendors sparked Amnesty International criticized the processes that occur during this time.
"Industrial mining is the worst work place for children, given the danger posed health and safety," said the research team of Amnesty International Mark Dummet.
"Companies with a total profit of 125 billion US dollars could not claim they were not able to check where the components of their products come from," he added.
There are at least 16 Dummet technology company in question, namely Ahong, Apple, BYD, Daimler, Dell, HP, Huawei, Inventec, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Vodafone, Volkswagen and ZTE.
Through diplomacy, Amnesty International and Afrewatch asked the government to impose regulations binding. Starting from the rows of the mining industry, suppliers, to manufacturers of smartphones.
"Without a law that requires companies to check the source of the components, they will continue to take advantage of the suppression of human rights. Governments must act," said Dummet.
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