Foxconn Closes India Plant

IT giant Foxconn, whose parent Hon Hai is a major supplier to electronics giants like Apple, has suspended operations at a factory in India after 250 workers were hospitalized in an incident believed to be linked to spraying of pesticide.

An AFP report said that work at the facility in Chennai, southern India, was halted on July 26 and is expected to resume in about a week.

Foxconn said the incident took place on July 23 last week and that some workers had experienced sensations of giddiness and nausea.

The factory in Chennai (Madras) city makes mobile telephone parts.

“Concerns”
There have been concerns over working conditions at Foxconn factories, with 10 staff at a plant in Shenzhen, China, committing suicide in the last year alone.

Intense media coverage into the plight of workers came to a head in June, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs defended the Foxconn iPhone manufacturing facility in China, saying he was “all over” trying to find the reason behind the suicides at a plant making Apple products.

“Foxconn is not a sweatshop,” he said at the time. “You go to this place and it’s a factory, but my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools - for a factory it’s a pretty nice factory.”

Jobs admitted, however, that the plant had seen a number of attempted suicides so far this year, a trend he called “really troubling”, but vowed to get to the bottom of.

“Apple does one of the best jobs of any company understanding the working conditions of our supply chain,” he added. “We are all over this.”

Foxconn eventually agreed to raise its workers’ basic salaries.

SOURCE: AFP

Edited by Ellie Duncan