From next month, NTT Anode Energy will launch an investigation to confirm whether forced labor is being carried out by its business partners.
Although strict attention is being paid to dealing with human rights issues of companies, efforts are accelerating outside the manufacturing industry, which has production sites.
The NTT Group has created new guidelines for dealing with human rights issues, and will start a full-scale investigation from next month to see if there is any forced labor or racial discrimination among business partners.
There are many business partners such as procurement of parts for communication equipment, and there are about 40,000 companies, but about 40 companies are selected every year, mainly from large companies such as NEC and Fujitsu, and the person in charge directly interviews and checks if there is a problem. ..
If there is a deficiency in the response and the request for correction does not respond, the transaction may be suspended.
Keijiro Murayama, General Manager of the Sustainability Promotion Office of NTT, said, "I thought it was necessary to have a policy that would be globally accepted as a company that expands globally. If there are any problems, we would like to work together to improve them."
Due to human rights issues in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, companies are paying close attention to their response.
In the manufacturing industry, major companies are investigating whether there are human rights problems in the supply chain, but efforts outside the manufacturing industry are accelerating, such as Softbank, a major mobile phone company, starting to interview business partners.