Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (July 8): Sime Darby Plantation Bhd (SDP) said today it is concerned over Liberty Shared's serious allegations on the group using forced and child labour to produce palm oil and the commodity’s related products as such claims are against SDP’s commitments articulated in its responsible agriculture and human rights charter.

In a statement in response to theedgemarkets.com's queries today, SDP said the allegations were included in a petition, which was submitted to the US Customs and Border Protection without soliciting any feedback from SDP.

"We wish to point out that the petition was submitted without soliciting any feedback from our company. Currently, SDP has access only to the petition summary which provides issues that were raised, without any details on the interviews that were conducted. In the spirit of openness, transparency and collaboration that SDP has always upheld, we intend to engage with Liberty Shared to further understand these allegations in detail to enable us to conduct a thorough and immediate investigation, and take corrective action, as the findings may warrant.

"We believe this in turn will further help strengthen our practices globally to ensure we embed the respect for human rights on the ground throughout our operations. We believe over the years we have made genuine progress in improving our labour practices on the ground through various initiatives and collaborations with multiple partners and NGOs. Our efforts can be seen in various disclosures that we have made public, which includes our latest Sustainability Report 2019, published in May 2020. We acknowledge the challenges and complexity of the supply chains across the industry and, therefore, of implementing our NDPE (No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation) commitments. Nevertheless, we are truly committed to eradicating instances of non-compliance by imposing immediate and appropriate corrective actions if and when they arise,” SDP said.

SDP said the petition was submitted to the US Customs and Border Protection on April 20, 2020 but was only made public by Liberty Shared yesterday (July 7).

According to SDP’s statement, the petition had included a statement seeking to “exclude palm oil and palm oil products produced wholly or in part by forced labour and child labour by SDP owned and affiliated companies”. 

At 12.01pm, SDP’s share price rose one sen or 0.2% to RM4.97 for a market value of RM34.19 billion. The stock saw 171,000 shares traded.

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