Apple’s supplier Foxconn which is facing the charges of employing underage workers has finally admitted that it indeed hired children aged 14-16 violating national law. This has put a question mark on company’s student intern programme.

Although Foxconn did not mention the number of under-age staff in its campus, it said that it had found some interns at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province, were under the legal working age of 16. It did not say how many were underage.

The company in a statement said that this is a violation of China's labour law and is against Foxconn’s policy and it has taken steps “to return the interns in question to their educational institutions.

According to China Labor Watch's investigation and a Chinese media report, Foxconn Yantai employed child labor during this last summer. Workers at this factory reported to CLW on October 4th that interns under 16 years of age worked in the factory. This has also been confirmed by the Chinese radio show "Zhongguo Zongheng".

A small number of student interns employed in the summer were between 14 to 16 years old.

Now Foxconn has begun to send those underage interns back to school. These underage interns were mainly sent to Foxconn by schools, but Foxconn did not check the IDs of these young interns. The schools involved in this incident should take primary responsible, but Foxconn is also culpable for not confirming the ages of their workers. China Labor Watch calls on the Chinese government to improve the current intern system of Chinese schools.

“According to our most recent investigation, the number of underage interns (14-16 ) is around 200. But Chinese media report stated that there are around 60. From the information we received, these interns have been sent back to schools”, it said.