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Zara linked to allegations of child exploitation
By m.p. - May 28, 2006 - 10:04 PM


A newspaper report says a Portuguese sub-contractor pays children 40 cents to sew a pair of shoes for the Spanish firm
A report in a Portuguese weekly publication has alleged that a Portuguese company sub-contracted by the Spanish multinational, Zara, is using child labour to sew shoes for the Galician firm.

The report in the publication, ‘Expresso’ supports its article with photographs of the children, aged between 10 and 14, working at home. It says they are paid 40 cents for each pair of hand-sewn shoes, and that this type of child labour is quite common in Northern Portugal, an area of high unemployment. The name of the company in question has not been released, but Zara’s parent company, Inditex, have said the allegations would be a very serious breach of their code of conduct.
An inspection of the factory last year, as part of the textile company’s audit system of its sub-contractors, detected nothing untoward.

‘We shall confirm it first, but if it is true, Inditex will be implacable, and this factory will no longer carry out any work for our group,’ said a spokesman.