Workers in Saudi Arabia: Carrefour’s clarification to our article: “We will expand the investigations and guarantee respect for the rights of those who work”

ROMA – In response to our article of 22 October last in which we gave an account of a report by Amnesty International regarding the poor treatment of immigrant workers, deceived as Carrefour employees by unidentified mediators, the food distribution giant wishes clarify some points.

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The points of the report published by Amnesty International have been the subject of discussion with the humanitarian organization and ours franchisee Majid Al Futtaim Retail (MAF) for several months. We have taken the reports of Amnesty and we immediately requested our partner MAF to initiate internal investigations among its employees and subcontractors in Saudi Arabia. Preliminary investigations did not confirm the elements identified by the report Amnestybut have highlighted other problems relating to accommodation, training and monitoring of working hours, for which corrective actions have been undertaken, communicated to Amnesty by letter on September 16th.

We want to broaden the investigations. To prevent possible situations of non-compliance with human rights in the direct and indirect activities of our franchising partner, we have decided to expand the investigations by entrusting in-depth checks to an independent expert, already appointed. We are currently working with him to finalize the details of his investigation.

We are committed to ensuring respect for rights. Carrefour is firmly committed to ensuring respect for human rights by its partners and, together with MAF, will take all necessary measures in the event of non-compliance. We will discuss the results of this investigation and any action plans with Amnesty during an upcoming meeting with them.