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09/25/2005:

"Big bonuses go to rulers of aid empire"

Benita was up before dawn. She had to start work early to avoid the baking heat and the oppressive humidity of the Papua New Guinea climate. Her job was to scoop up fertiliser with an empty fish can and spread the chemicals around the base of thousands of palm trees growing on a huge plantation in the Milne Bay province on the island's south-eastern tip.
Oil from these palm trees is used as an ingredient in hundreds of Western foodstuffs including chocolate, margarine and crisps. For a gruelling 10-hour day, Benita was paid less than £3. But this was to be her last day of toil. At the end of her shift, she collapsed and died after a cardiac arrest.

Benita's name is fictional, but her case is real. She died on 14 April, 2003. Her death was recorded in a confidential internal company document obtained by The Observer - her real identity was not revealed nor who, if anyone, was to blame. It simply states: 'The post mortem cited severe chest and abdominal injuries.' While there are many young people who die while working for corporations across the developing world, Benita's case has particular resonance for the British authorities.

The company Benita worked for, Pacific Rim Palm Oil Ltd, is managed by an arm of British government known as CDC, an abbreviation for its former name - the Commonwealth Development Corporation. CDC controls more than £1 billion of public money and its aim is to invest in developing countries to help the poor. The organisation has one shareholder - Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development.

The people who run CDC certainly do not want for much. Richard Laing, its chief executive, earned £380,000 last year, of which more than £200,000 was paid in bonuses. Other executives at the quango earned hundreds of thousands of pounds in salary and bonuses.

An Observer investigation into CDC's activities reveals that Benita's death was just one of 13 'fatal accidents' at its main projects in 2003. Others include two separate incidents where children were killed at Songas power project in Tanzania. In one case a two-year-old was crushed by a company tractor and in another a small girl was hit by another company vehicle and died in hospital three days later. In Swaziland a contractor's truck killed a child on his way to school. The firm's internal report, 'CDC fatal accidents and injuries', dated 10 March, 2004, reveals that there have been 62 such deaths in nine years, many of them involving company vehicles killing individuals in road accidents. It concluded that, though it believed its accident rate was relatively low, 'it is clear from the investigations into the 2003 fatalities that there were many instances where management could have done more'.

But it is not just the number of fatal accidents that are causing concern to campaign groups and politicians. CDC has been accused of environmental damage, misjudging investments that do little to help the poor and paying large bonuses to its British bosses.
guardian.co.uk