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Send to friendThe Rugmark label, which pictures a smiling face on a carpet, has become the trademark for a promising initiative to identify and promote hand-knotted carpets made without child labor. The Rugmark Foundation, which was chartered in 1994 in India and recently extended to Nepal, provides a voluntary certification program for carpet exporters. Rugmark awards licenses to carpet exporters who submit to a monitoring system that includes surprise inspections and cross-checking of export records and looms. One-fourth of the world’s child labor force is said to be located in India, where an estimated 55 million children work in hazardous industries that threaten their health, growth and life. One of these industries is the hand-knotted carpet industry, in which an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 children work long hours with little to no pay and receive one meal a day. India exports over $150 million worth of hand-knotted carpets around the world. Its primary importers are Germany and the United States, which together account for over two-thirds of sales. The large growth in the carpet export industry coupled by the cheaper wages of child labor have caused an increase in the “employment” of children in carpet looms around the country.
Rugmark was founded by a group of Indian and international NGOs, the Indo-German Export Promotion Program and UNICEF. In December 1995, its board of directors decided on a three-step process of investigation. The first is license approval after a series of inspections. The second is random surprise inspections and the third is carpet tracking, whereby each Rugmark carpet can be tracked by means of its maker, location, and exporter.
Inspectors are hired and trained by the Rugmark Foundation. A number of measures are taken to ensure that investigations are carried out properly: Investigators work in pairs where partners are rotated; they do not know which manufacturer they are seeing until the day of the inspection; they are given competitive salaries to avoid bribes; and supervisors have no direct attachment to any loom owners. The inspectors either approve the manufacturers or, upon finding evidence of child labor, give them a limited time to stop it. Not all carpets of licensed looms automatically get Rugmark labels. Surprise investigations ensure the continuation of compliance by the looms, and only then will carpets made in that period be certified. The tracking system gives a unique number to every carpet so that it can be tracked from the importer to the manufacturer.
In the first 20 months of operation, Rugmark-India issued licenses to more than 100 exporters operating 13,000 looms, while well over 270,000 carpets were certified, labeled and put on the market. Most of these were exported to Germany, the world’s largest importer of oriental carpets. Today approximately one-third of all carpets imported into Germany from India are certified by Rugmark. Meanwhile, a growing number of importers in other countries, including Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States, are asking suppliers for Rugmark-labeled carpets.
In the first year, spot checks by independent Rugmark inspectors found 760 children working illegally on 408 looms licensed by Rugmark. As of September 1996, 164 looms were decertified. The Indian government has also set up an inspection and certification system for the carpet industry known as Kaleen. Fifteen percent of carpet looms in India either possess or have applied for Rugmark licenses. These, along with the founding of Rugmark Nepal, are the first signs of success.
Children who are found to be illegally working during inspections are rehabilitated and schooled by Rugmark. Upwards of 4,000 children in India, Pakistan, and Nepal have been rehabilitated through such Rugmark programs. In addition, thousands of other children have been prevented from working at the carpet looms altogether just from the publicity that is generated through the Rugmark programs. Rehabilitation programs are currently at work in Pakistan, Nepal, and India, and marketing programs are taking place in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Importers of Rugmark carpets agree to contribute one percent of the market value of carpets imported towards schools and training programs. The exporters also pay a fee of 0.25% of the carpet value, which goes towards financing inspections.
Rugmark has faced some challenges in its efforts. Due to the widely scattered location of looms in India, regular inspections are difficult. The structure of the industry is not uniform. While some exporters are closely connected to the looms, many employ intermediaries, which makes it hard to enforce the tracking component of the three-step certification process.
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