The Child Slaves Who Created Your Electric Car

Fact checked
child slaves

Thousands of African child slaves bear the brunt of the drive for clean energy.

Children as young as four are working in squalid conditions deep inside cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to help power electric cars and modern electronic devises such as smartphones, tablets and laptops that depend on lithium-ion batteries.

Amnesty International: Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo power the global trade in cobalt.

child slavesBy Jess Murray (Truth Theory):

Whilst the news of Britain’s pledge to ban the sale of both petrol and diesel cars in favor of electric vehicles by 2040 sounds positive at first, reports have stated that there is a very serious downside that has recently been revealed.

According to reports, children as young as four years old are working in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to check the rocks for signs of cobalt, which is used to create the batteries that power the electric cars. The investigation found that there are currently around 40,000 children working daily in the polluted, dusty mines for as little as 8p a day. The Daily Mail claimed that the majority of big motor manufacturers producing electric vehicles currently purchase their cobalt from the impoverished central African state, as it is the world’s biggest producer of the chemical element.

RelatedApple, Sony, Samsung Face Child Labour Claims

The labor is not regulated, and the recent announcement of the move to electric vehicles has increased demand heavily to prepare for this, due to each electric car needing an average of 15kg (33lb) of cobalt to be manufactured.

No protective clothing is provided to the miners who venture 600ft below the surface to dig out the rocks by hand. Mining in these conditions has many health risks, one being a specific respiratory disease called ‘cobalt lung’ which can even lead to death. The UN estimates that around 80 children a year die from this mining practice, although many deaths go unregistered and the bodies are buried underneath the collapsed tunnels.

Despite a DRC law forbidding the enslavement of young children, according to reports this is not enforced. The Daily Mail stated that, “the UN’s International Labour Organisation has described cobalt mining in DRC as ‘one of the worst forms of child labour’ due to the health risks.”

child slaves

Truth Theory

See AlsoTesla To Transform The Power Grid With Battery Technology

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.