NGO coalition responds to Ethical Toy Program inquiry, says 'fundamental flaws' in follow-up audits
... We recognise that IETP communicates the findings [of its follow-up investigation] quite openly and transparently but we have concerns regarding IETP's methods...
We are disappointed to see that many of the allegations in the report were not evidenced in IETP's follow-up audits... The coalition believes there are fundamental flaws in IETP's process of conducting third party audits, which do not effectively involve workers' voices, nor do they increase the accountability of purchasing companies...
Several allegations which were discovered were not identified as grievances due to non-compliance of IETP-standards with Chinese labor law...
Although IETP mentioned they would take steps to address several of our demands in their June 2019 letter to the Coalition, we did not see the results of these measures in our investigation, especially... [as] we have only investigated five of the other a thousand IETP certified factories this year...
[W]e... call on IETP to include a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment in the certification checklist...