In July 2020, Top Glove retained Impactt as an independent consultant specialising in ethical trade practices, human rights and labour practices with specific experience of remedying forced labour in Malaysia to:
- Conduct a forced labour investigation on the Top Glove Group (the “Group”) to assess the presence of forced labour by reference to the ILO’s 11 Forced Labour Indicators
- Propose corrective action plans to improve the Group’s labour practices
- Monitor the Group’s implementation of the corrective action plans
The Group has also engaged Impactt to perform quarterly verification for a year until August 2021 to monitor the Group’s ongoing implementation of the corrective action plans and other remedial steps. The corrective action plans included Top Glove implementing Impactt’s recommendation to make remediation payments to its foreign workers who paid recruitment fees to their recruitment agents and/or sub-agents.
This report sets out Impactt’s findings at the 3rd verification carried out in April 2021.
- Impactt found that Top Glove had made further progress to close the 6 indicators of Forced labour Indicators remaining in January 2021 (retention of identity documents, abusive working and living conditions, deception, debt bondage, physical and sexual violence and intimidation).
- In Impactt’s opinion, as at April 2021, and considering the Group’s ongoing actions, these indicators are no longer present at Top Glove at a level to indicate systemic forced labour.
- Impactt made a number of further recommendations to cement progress and support Top Glove’s journey towards decent work.
