Retaw corporation is a water purification and bottling company that process water for human consumption of excellent quality worldwide. Our vision is to turn Retaw Corporation known worldwide expanding its horizons through a business exercise of sound strategies that consolidate the well-being of our internal and external partners and confirm our leadership over time. Recently we have partnership with AMREF- African Medical and Research Foundation, which is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization whose mission is to improve the health of disadvantaged people in Africa as a means for them to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives. Retaw corporation wants to implement corporate responsibility in the countries of Africa where the habitants suffer to get pure water or at least what they can get. Our project is called “Nothing like water” which with the help of the NGO we will give the habitants bottled purified water and creating close establishments from their village in order for them to not walk long distance to find water that can harm their health. This will improve their quality of life, as long as their health by avoiding some diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria.
As a company, we have certain legal issues that must be debated in order to successfully implement our goal and mission. According to statistics, age in Africa has the world’s highest incidence rates of child labor. The problem is severe in sub-Saharan Africa where more than 40% of all children aged 5-14 labor for survival, or about 48 million children. According to UNICEF, they define child labor as, “work that exceeds a minimum number of hours, depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. If a work is considered harmful for the child, then it should be eliminated. NGOs and companies should try to eliminate harmful jobs for children. One of the debatable issues for this matter is that Child labor may be a financial necessity for families. In certain areas, families are forced to make their children work to be able to feed them, it is a reality for a country like Africa which is one of the poorest countries in the world. Even for the parents to work it won’t be enough to buy the basic essentials to survive. Therefore, as a water company trying to improve the health of disadvantaged people in Africa, we believe that giving a worthy job for the children can help them to survive and help their families as well. Our goal is not to exploit children but to help them prepare for the future. Child labor may be acceptable if the work is appropriate if it’s not harmful and reachable depending on their capacity, as well if the children have time left to attend school.
Another legal issue that must be debated is sexual harassment. Many African women experience unwanted sexual advances in their place of work or study. This creates a hostile-environment for the employee and a bad reputation for the company as well. The EEOC says that sexual harassment includes “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” The South African Supreme Court of Appeal and Constitutional Court have ruled that the employer is liable for sexual violence perpetrated by his employee on a co-employee or on a third party in the workplace or in what can be considered as an extension of the workplace. There are various ways to solve this problem. First of all, we must start at home. In today’s world, boys are more valued than girls in the majority of aspects, the term “boys will be boys” gives much aggression, exploitation and injustice. In order to fix the problem and give importance the value for women, Parents must raise their sons to value girls and to respect their rights and autonomy. As an NGO, our main solution for this problem is education. Since we want to create corporate responsibility, not only by giving the children an opportunity to be part of our mission but also to improve their quality of life for everyone, we want to lead schools to teach respect and gender equality to both sexes. With our partnership with AMREF- African Medical and Research Foundation, girls are taught assertiveness and boundary setting, which is backed up with physical self-defense training. For workplace implementation. It has to be clear and transparent, if there is an action or concern, it has to follow a report procedure of inappropriate behavior.
Another legal issue are environmental issues. The continent faces many challenges and suffers from some serious environmental problems, including climate change, deforestation, water pollution, coal mining and more. These issues need to be controlled by us as the company and the NGO to create sustainability and corporate responsibility. Currently, Africa is still firmly in a drought situation and has not recovered enough to reduce the restrictions to water use. One of our main concerns is water pollution, which is the lack of clean water in Southern Africa. According to the United Nation’s Convention on Climate Change on South Africa in 2000, “the water around Africa is unevenly distributed, meaning that 60% of the water is situated in only 20% of the land”. As a water company, this is our main problem, yet a great advantage because it gives us the opportunity to change and improve the health of disadvantaged people in Africa with our purified water, by creating close establishments from their village in order for them to find clean water without walking long distances, risking their health and others. According to the website, thewaterproject.org, “Many Africans are moving to rural areas, adding to the already high demands for clean water and while demands are growing drastically, freshwater supplies remain limited”. Although South Africa has one of the best, cleanest water out of all the countries in Southern Africa, many didn’t have access to basic sanitations due to the poverty in those areas. Another issue for the environment is coal mining, which is one of Southern Africa’s main energy source, the cons of this is that it has a negative impact on the land’s water, air and soil quality. Although it has a negative impact, we can use it to our advantage to use it as energy for purified water, what we need is to control the excess coal mining to avid Acid mine drainage.