Dongguan Lekit Stationery Company, one of the four companies that have been accused of using child labor in manufacturing Olympic merchandise, has admitted to the public that its OEM hired some primary school students in processing some work.
Lekit said due to a lack of employees, they transferred part of their orders to Donguan Lite Stationery Company to deal with the excess work. The latter employed 12-13 students of Grade 5 or Grade 6 to process the stationery for six days and they paid the students each RMB20. However, Lekit denied that the students were asked to process Olympic Games related merchandise.
Dongguan Municipal Joint Investigation Team, which started an investigation of the companies as soon as the news was exposed, said that they found many Olympics related products processed by Lite Stationery during their inspection. They said they would further investigate the case and publish the final results soon.
Dongguan Lekit Stationery Company is a Taiwan-funded company engaged in stationery making. In July 2006 it was authorized to produce Olympic merchandise.
