ANROEV

Date: 19 June, 2017

To the Minjoo Party of Korea:

We represent international networks that have been focusing for many years on human rights, occupational health and environmental health in the global electronics industry.  We stand in solidarity with SHARPS during their historic 600+ day sit-in at Samsung.

The recent framework agreement signed by the Minjoo Party and SHARPS (see below) provides key objectives for worker safety policies including right-to-know, protecting sub-contractor workers, and strengthening enforcement and penalties to increase corporate accountability.

We encourage the Minjoo Party to begin work to concretize this framework as soon as possible. In particular, point one dealing with the negotiations between SHARPS and Samsung should be addressed immediately to facilitate an appropriate solution to the issue of Samsung’s occupational disease issues which have been documented by SHARPS, in the peer reviewed scientific literature, and in several UN reports submitted to the Human Rights Council. Comprehensive implementation of the Minjoo Party – SHARPs framework agreement could make a significant contribution to worker safety in the electronics industry and help advance global standards.

Signed,

Asia Monitor Resource Centre (AMRC)

Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV)

GoodElectronics Network (GE)

International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT)

IPEN

Minjoo Party – SHARPS Framework Agreement

1. The Minjoo Party empathizes with SHARPS for taking issue with Samsung’s own compensation scheme and will put efforts into having negotiations resumed between Samsung and SHARPS in order to seek a rightful solution to the issue of Samsung worker’s occupational diseases.

2. The Minjoo Party will put efforts into improving statutes that strengthen civil and criminal penalties against corporations for serious and/or frequent industrial accidents for employers and for covering up such accidents.

3. The Minjoo Party will put efforts into preventing the outsourcing of risk by strengthening penalties for safety and public-health violations throughout the supply chain.

4. The Minjoo Party will put efforts into developing a transparent disclosure process for hazardous chemicals to better hold employers accountable and to ensure employees’ right to know about their exposure to industrial safety risks.

June 5, 2017: The next ANROEV biennial conference is scheduled to be held in Kathmandu, Nepal from September 19 to 21, 2017. ANROEV has been providing space to victims and organisations to raise their collective voice on OSH rights and to bring necessary changes with respect to OSH conditions in the Asian region.

The local hosts for the network conference will be GEFONT and CEPHED, both organisations are members of the ANROEV network.

The secretariat will come back shortly with the online registration form and other technical details pertaining to ANROEV 2017. At this stage, participants are requested to block the dates (Sept 19 – 21, 2017) to ensure their attendance at this biennial conference.

In case of any questions or queries, please feel free to contact AR Chowdhury Repon, Coordinator, ANROEV Secretariat or his colleague Mamunul Haque, Policy Consultant/OSHE Foundation, E-mail: anroev.con2017@gmail.com

We look forward to seeing you in Nepal.

June 5, 2017: Nearly 10,000 South Koreans have suffered or are suffering from diseases related to environmental factors — many of them lung-related diseases — in the past decade, government data released by a civic group showed Sunday.

According to the Asian Citizen’s Center for Environment and Health, in one fourth of the 9,853 reported cases, victims died.

Of the total, 2,467 were recognized by the Environment Ministry to have asbestos-related diseases. About 40 percent or 1,006 of the victims have died mostly due to lung-related diseases.

Asbestos is defined as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization, as exposure to worn out asbestos materials can cause diseases such as lung cancers and mesothelioma. Asbestos was widely used in the 1970s here to build slate roofs, interior materials, soundproof walls and insulators at low costs.

Despite the ban on its use for construction material, there are still a large number of buildings that contain asbestos in the country, posing health threats to citizens amid the frequent redevelopment and reconstruction of such buildings, the report said.

Also, the total number of 5,615 victims, including infants, pregnant women and elderly, have filed damage reports to the government as of May for having suffered from the use of toxic humidifier disinfectant.

About 21 percent, or 1,195, of them have died since August 2011 when the government officially confirmed the link between the health damages of victims and the toxic substances widely used to sterilize humidifiers here until six years ago, the report said.

A recent state-led survey estimated that at least 3.5 to 4 million Koreans had been exposed to the toxic humidifier disinfectant.

The report also mentioned that 1,763 victims who live around 11 cement factories across the nation and reported their lung-related sickness since 2007 were turned out to having suffered either lung cancer, pneumoconiosis or ventilatory failure.

Eight others who reported their difficulty of breathing to the National Institute of Environmental Research were residents living near a briquette manufacturer in southern city of Daegu, the report said.

Choi Ye-yong, head of the ACCEH and publisher of the report said that large number of victims from toxic humidifier disinfectant as well as asbestos-related diseases are still suffering other long-term health illnesses and underlying diseases.

“While the most common environmental diseases were both lung-related and closely linked to inhaling the polluted air, the government should come up with stronger measures to provide practical damage treatment, not only tallying up the damage figures,” Choi told The Korea Herald.

An independent investigative body to manage the damage reports and provide medical treatment based on law should be established to control the number of victims suffering from disease caused by exposure to toxic chemical products or environmental factors, Choi added.

(ddd@heraldcorp.com)

Source: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170604000194&_scpsug=crawled_141341_4f2726c0-491b-11e7-9ce4-f01fafd7b417#_scpsug=crawled_141341_4f2726c0-491b-11e7-9ce4-f01fafd7b417