British tea makers, including the famous Lipton brand, were accused Monday of sexually abusing more than 70 female employees by officials on plantations in Kenya, according to a BBC investigation.
“More than 70 women on Kenyan tea plantations, owned for years by two British companies, told the BBC they were sexually abused by their superiors,” the British channel reported on its website.
The plantations were pointed out as belonging to Lipton Teas and Infusion, which was recently a subsidiary of the British food and hygiene products giant Unilever, as well as to his compatriot James Finlay, a subsidiary of the Swire conglomerate.
According to testimonies collected by the BBC, several victims said they had no choice but to give in to the sexual demands of their bosses to get or keep their jobs. One of them says that she was infected with HIV.
A journalist for the channel, posing as a potential employee on farms owned by the two companies, was pressured into consenting to have sex in exchange for work.
Two managers immediately suspended
Unilever, whose sale of its Kenyan operations occurred during the filming, said it was “deeply shocked by the BBC show’s allegations,” in a statement to AFP.
“We have worked hard for many years to address the very serious issues of sexual and gender-based violence against women in the tea industry,” the group continued, saying it was “very disappointed” that this was not enough to resolve it. abuse.
The new owner, Lipton Teas and Infusions, claims to have “immediately suspended the two managers” implicated in the report and ordered a “full and independent investigation”, according to comments reported by the BBC.
The James Finlay company, for its part, assured the chain that it had suspended and denounced one of its managers to the police and opened an investigation to determine if its operations in Kenya suffered from an “endemic problem of sexual violence.”
Asked by AFP, Lipton Teas and Infusions and James Finlay did not immediately respond. Unilever completed in July the sale for 4.5 billion euros of its tea division, which includes 34 brands including Lipton, Tazo and Pukka, to the CVC Capital Partners fund. Since then, this entity has taken the name “Lipton Teas and Infusions”.
Source: BFM TV
