Concerns about the use of slave labor and subhuman working conditions were the subject of a recent Virginia Procurement workgroup meeting. The committee heard about the subject after a senator offered a bill banning the state’s purchase of materials made in such conditions.
“We have to go to the mine to pay for a pen or pencil, that’s the nature of living, because if you can’t people die of malnutrition,” Francois Mukumbilwa told Radio IQ.
Mukumbilwa is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He now lives in Harrisonburg where he’s the Director of Aid to the Cry of the Oppressed in Africa.
He was describing his own experience in slave-like labor conditions. He started mining to survive in his early teens before conflict in his homeland forced him to seek refugee status in America.
Now 20 years later, while advocating for legislation that would have made it easier for refugees and immigrants to get housing, he met Southside Senator Bill Stanley.
“I think it's a great statement from the Commonwealth of Virginia saying we’re not going to tolerate that and therefore we won't buy products that come from those types of nations,” Stanley said just before the recent procurement meeting.
His 2024 bill would have banned the import of cobalt and other minerals, many of which are used in creating renewable batteries, mined under such conditions. But it was killed by committee and instead sent to the procurement workgroup to study such a ban’s impact.
Mukumbilwa hopes the ban will come to pass and that it sends a message beyond state purchase agreements.
“Big corporations will open their eyes instead of being greedy," he hoped. "They have to see how real people are suffering. How children are suffering.”
The procurement workgroup should provide recommendations ahead of the 2025 General Assembly session.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
