He is employed, via a subcontractor, at Tenke Fungurume mine (TFM), one of the country’s biggest industrial mines, which is 80% owned by the Chinese company China Molybdenum(CMOC).Īn investigation by the Guardian has found that some workers, often employed through subcontractors, allege they are victims of severe exploitation, including wages as low as 30p an hour, precarious employment with no contracts, and paltry food rations. Pierre is not working at an artisanal mine, however. ‘At lunch I’m given two bread rolls,’ claims a miner working at an industrial mine in the DRC. Some companies in the cobalt supply chain have promised to stop sourcing from artisanal mines and instead get the mineral from large-scale industrial mines, which are seen as a safer option both for workers and corporate reputations.
CMCL COBALT MINES FREE
Stories of the harsh and dangerous working conditions endured by miners in the DRC’s informal, or artisanal, cobalt mines – of child labour and miners being buried alive as tunnels cave in – have provoked an international outcry in recent years, forcing the western technology and automotive brands that rely on the mineral to look for ways to source “clean” cobalt, free from human rights abuses. “The relationship between us and the is like a slave and a master,” says Pierre.
If you do, you’ll be fired,” he says, squatting on the dirt floor of the bare brick shack he rents. If he is sick and misses more than two days in a month, more money is cut. If he takes a day off, he says money is deducted from his wages. It gives me a headache … The mine makes so much and we make so little,” he says. Not that lunch is worth waiting for: he claims he is given just two small bread rolls and a carton of juice.
He says his basic wage is the equivalent of £2.60 ($3.50) a day, but if he works through lunch and puts in hours of overtime, he can make up to about £3.70.
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