This archive report was first published on 2 September 2021.
Published on September 3, 2021, Tesco's ban on avocados supplied by Kakuzi, a Murang'a-based agriculture firm, has been in place for nearly a year.
The British retailer temporarily dropped Kakuzi as its supplier of avocados on October 11, 2020, pending investigations into alleged assault and sexual misconduct by some of its employees.
According to sources, Tesco pressed for deeper reforms to safeguard the rights of workers and the communities living around the Kakuzi farms.
Through its Kent-based parent Camellia Plc, Kakuzi has been sued over the alleged human rights violations by its employees, which it has denied.
Law firm Leigh Day said that 79 Kenyans had launched a legal claim in the High Court in London against Camellia for alleged human rights abuses by security guards employed by Kakuzi, its Kenyan subsidiary.
The allegations, dating from 2009 to January 2020, include rapes, attacks on local villagers, and a man being beaten to death, Leigh Day said.
Despite the allegations, Kakuzi has pledged to accelerate human rights reforms to comply with international standards.
“We are taking any issues on human rights extremely seriously,” Wilson Odio, the Kakuzi assistant general manager in charge of corporate affairs, told the Business Daily in an interview.
“We are cognizant of the fact that going forward businesses will more and more have to observe human rights in the course of their operations. Kakuzi does not in any way entertain human rights abuse of any sort.”
Dr Odio cited some recently instituted measures to address the claims, including the employment of a manager in charge of human rights issues, an audit by a global firm on the impact of its operations on human rights, and the establishment of a dedicated operational-level grievance reporting mechanism.
