The initiative launched by a non-government organisation, the Mekong Club, will require firms to demonstrate from a list of 10 things what they will do to address modern slavery.
“In order to be a part of this pledge, you have to show that you have at least five out of 10 categories of activities taking place,” Mekong Club CEO Matt Friedman told Macau News Agency (MNA).
“We don’t want people to just sign a pledge if they aren’t doing anything. So if you’re only doing two things, we’ll give you a year to get it up to five,” he explained.
These categories include raising awareness about modern slavery among their staff, as well as responsible procurement and supply chain management.
Friedman singled out MGM China as a good example, saying the company was quick to express interest in making this pledge.
“That organisation has been very keen to, number one, ensure that their supply chain is free of forced work. Number two, they want their staff to know about this, they’ve done sufficient training, they’ve had a number of events,” the international human-trafficking expert says.
From the data collected among the companies that sign the pledge, the Mekong Club has no plans to ‘name and shame’ individual firms, but will instead develop a public benchmark.
“We take the data and put it in an anonymous way that will allows us to have a business index number,” Friedman said. “Kind of like the Dow Jones average for support, so that we can track over the year the contribution within the business community.”
The index should be released before the end of the year.
By Vitor Quintã
