This report is a field assessment study on asbestos and the the extent of its use in the country bringing to attention to the gravity of the situation in countries like Asia and the building time bomb in the region with regards to asbestos use.
In an extraordinary and dramatic turn of events, the Canadian government today announced that it will no longer oppose the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance under the Rotterdam Convention. Canada’s Minister of Industry, Christian Paradis, made the announcement in his constituency of Thetford Mines today. Paradis also promised that Ottawa will provide $50 million to enable workers to retrain in other fields of work.
In a blow to Samsung Electronics, a court ruled yesterday that the deaths of two employees at Samsung’s semiconductor plant should be considered an industrial accident and that Samsung should compensate their families accordingly.
The two workers died of leukemia, and their families filed for industrial accident compensation with Korean Workers’ Compensation and Welfare (KWCW) three years ago, claiming their illness had been caused by exposure to harmful elements at the plant.
Batam is an island close to Singapore but part of Indonesia. Until the late 1970s it had a few thousand inhabitants that lived mostly on the produce of land, forests and sea. Like Shenzhen, it all changed in late 1970s and early 1980s. Batam became an assembly line where cheap labour could assemble parts and products that would feed into the more advanced and capital intensive Singapore industry. Being an island it was an ideal location for a free trade zone and it was developed primarily for the electronics sector.