Samsung Electronics apologises for factory cancer cases

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics apologised yesterday to workers who developed cancer after working at some of its factories, finallyendingadecade-longdispute at the world’s top chipmaker.

The father of a dead 22-yearold worker and the company’s co-president Kim Ki-nam signed a formal settlement agreement in Seoul as other disabled exemployees looked on.

“We sincerely apologise to the workers who suffered from illness and their families,” said the firm’s co-president Kim Ki-nam. “We have failed to properly manage health risks at our semiconductor and LCD factories.”

Samsung Electronics is the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer and chipmaker and the flagship subsidiary of the Samsung Group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the South’s economy.

Samsung currently operates vast semiconductor production compounds in Suwon as well as the cities of Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, as well as Xian in China.

Campaign groups say that about 240 people have suffered from work-related illnesses after being employed at Samsung semiconductor and display factories, with around 80 of them — many of them young women — dying.

Under a deal announced earlier this month, Samsung Electronics will pay the group’s employees compensation of up to 150 million won (US133,000) per case.

It covers 16 types of cancer, some other rare illnesses, miscarriages and congenital diseases suffered by the workers’ children. Claimants can have worked at plants as far back as 1984.

The scandal emerged in 2007 when former workers at its semiconductor and display factories in Suwon, south of Seoul, and their families said that staff had been diagnosed or died of various forms of cancer.

A series of rulings and decisions by courts, Seoul’s state labour welfare agency and a mediation committee followed over more than 10 years, culminating in Friday’s announcement.

Hwang Sang-ki, who signed the agreement on behalf of the workers and their families, told reporters he was glad to have fulfilled his promise to his daughter, who died of leukaemia in 2007, to prove Samsung was to blame for her death. — AFP