The BBC on Monday, said it has uncovered an ongoing sexual exploitation in tea plantations in Kenya, which supply most popular brands to the British market.
A video posted on the BBC World website showed a supervisor in a Kenyan tea farm with an undercover reporter. He asked the investigative reporter to touch and undress him.
He was unaware that he was being recorded while a BBC crew was nearby for the reporter’s safety.
Over 70 women claimed they had been sexually exploited by the farm supervisors, owned by Unilever, Lipton and James Finlay & Co.
The companies supply some of Britain’s most popular brands, including PG Tips and Lipton.
Some women told the BBC that work is scarce and they felt that they did not have any options, a VOA news report says.
On another plantation, the same undercover reporter attended an induction day for new recruits, where a manager gave a speech saying, the company had a zero-tolerance sexual harassment policy.
John Chebochok, the recruitment manager for Scottish firm James Finlay and Company, invited the BBC’s undercover investigator “Katy” (not her real name) to a job interview, not on company premises but in a hotel room.
He then cornered “Katy,” pinning her against a window as he tried to coerce her into having sex with him.
One of the women who works for Chebochok describes him as a ‘predator’, the report said.
The footage shows Katy saying she does not consent, but Chebochok persists, asking her to touch him, and telling her: “Consent, just consent. I have helped you, help me. We’ll lie down, finish and go. Then you come and work.”
Katy continues to refuse his advances, and he eventually accepts that she will not sleep with him for work. When she follows up with Chebochok a week later, he ignores her messages before blocking her.
Finley told the BBC that it has decided to investigate to determine if their Kenyan operation has “an endemic issue with sexual violence.”
Lipton, which bought one of the plantations from Unilever while the BBC investigation was underway, has also launched an investigation.
