IFC failed to ensure workers' safety at APPL plantations: WB investigator

In response to Business Standard queries, both owners of APPL - IFC and Tata Global Beverages - said they had been working towards improving workers' conditions

The World Bank’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) had failed to address the health and safety concerns of thousands of workers and their families living in the Tata group’s tea plantations in India’s Northeast, the bank’s official investigator found last week. The investigator’s latest findings have come two years after it first exposed the poor living and working conditions of labourers in the Tata group’s plantations, which are partially financed by IFC since 2009.

Over 30,000 workers and their 125,000 family members live on the 25 tea estates owned by the Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (APPL) —a