A young migrant worker, who was doing an internship in the factory which produces the i-Phone, throws himself from the roof of the dormitory. The tragedy of Chinese workers continues, victims of indifference and exploitation.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Despite the wage increase promised by manufacturers to Chinese migrant workers, the wave of suicides that struck the Chinese factories last June seems unstoppable. Another worker at the Taiwanese company Foxconn - the company that produces components for i-Phone and i-Pod - has committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the factory dormitory.

On Thursday the worker, an eighteen year old migrant, threw himself from the sixth floor of the dormitory owned by Chimei Innolux Corp., a subsidiary of Foxconn in Foshan in the southern province of Guangdong. The young man had been taking part in a summer internship at the company since June.  He was still enrolled in the Dongfang technology school of Shijiazhuang, the capital of the northern province of Hebei.

In the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, also in Guangdong province, 10 workers committed suicide and three others tried to do so between May and June this year. The employees threw themselves off the balcony of the dormitory or the same factory. Behind the suicides, the analysts explained, were poor working and living conditions: employees, in order to scrape together a salary of just over 200 Euros per month, have to work everyday and work overtime every day, forbidden to speak to their work colleagues.

With 20 factories in China, Foxconn employs more than 800 thousand workers. The company in Taiwan is the largest in the electronics world. 420 thousand people working in Shenzhen alone, which produces about 70% of all Apple products, as well as components for Siemens, Nokia, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others. But the problem of labour exploitation is not limited to the factory: Honda and Toyota have also been hit by workers strikes.

To stem the suicides and strikes, the factories have granted their employees a pay rise. The central government has also defined the migrants “children of the country" and asked investors to protect them. However, now that the workers’ situation is no longer the focus of international media attention, the suicides have begun again.

• China
• foxconn
• workers
• suicide
• rights
• apple
• i-pod
• i-phone