KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 19): FGV Holdings Bhd announced that no non-compliance was identified based on the Fair Labor Association (FLA)’s forced labour practice benchmarks while no evidence of child labour was found in the company’s operations.

“FGV is fully committed to exemplary human rights’ initiatives and our sustainability agenda has dedicated much effort to uphold labour standards in fulfilment of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDG) in eliminating forced and child labour,” FGV group chief executive officer Datuk Mohd Nazrul Izam said in a statement on Friday.

FGV said FLA conducted an independent external assessment (IEA) between November 2021 and January 2022 and involved a review of both FGV’s management systems and field-level operations.

It was based on the FLA’s Workplace Code of Conduct (WCOC), which is derived from international labour standards and internationally accepted good labour practices.

FGV became a participating company of the FLA in 2019 and commits to implementing a long-term and comprehensive action plan to strengthen various aspects of FGV’s labour practices.

This includes code alignment, the recruitment process of migrant workers, capacity building and training modules on human rights of migrant workers, grievance mechanism, and a labour standard compliance monitoring system.

“FGV, in consultation with FLA, has developed a comprehensive corrective action plan to address and resolve all findings arising from the IEA. Many of the action items have already been implemented and relevant resources are identified to close the remaining gaps,” it added.

Further, as part of efforts toward petitioning for the revocation of the Withhold Release Order (WRO) by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), FGV, in November 2021 appointed ELEVATE as an independent third-party organisation to conduct an assessment of FGV’s operations against the 11 International Labour Organization (ILO) Indicators of forced labour.

On Sept 30, 2020, the CBP announced a ban on palm oil imports from FGV following a year-long investigation into allegations that the plantation group used forced labour.

The CBP said its investigation reasonably indicated signs of forced labour such as deception, physical and sexual violence, the retention of identity documents and intimidation, and that threats had been made.

The CBP also raised concerns that forced child labour was potentially used in FGV's production processes.

Over the past two years, eight Malaysian companies have been subject to WROs by the US CBP.

Two of these eight companies were released from the order in 2021 after taking preventive measures and appropriate actions to overcome this matter.    

The remaining six entities that remain in the list, as updated on July 15, 2022 by the CBP are FGV, Sime Darby Plantation Bhd, Smart Glove, Brightway Group, YTY Group, as well as Maxter Glove Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, Maxwell Glove Manufacturing Bhd and Supermax Glove Manufacturing; Smart Glove (collectively).

Shares in FGV closed one sen or 0.66% higher at RM1.52, giving it a market capitalisation of RM5.55 billion.