Modern Slavery Statement

This statement constitutes Ahmad Tea’s slavery statement for the financial year ended 31 March 2024.

Ahmad Tea has always maintained a working environment which upholds each individual to their highest potential. We foster working relationships based on dignity and respect and pursue our business with the aim of enriching the standard of living for all connected to our brand. 

In particular, Ahmad Tea continues to improve its practices to identify and eliminate any slavery and human trafficking in its business and supply chains, in accordance to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act (UK) 2015.

Ahmad Tea will not knowingly support or do business with any person or organisation involved in slavery or trafficking. Moreover we are improving our business practices to deepen the transparency we need to identify potential risks to all human rights within our supply chain.

Biggest risk of Modern Slavery in our Supply Chain is in the Tea Gardens

(1) Identifying the Risk

Two of the four countries that Ahmad Tea source our teas from are at a higher risk of modern slavery – Kenya ranks 20th in Africa and India 6th out of 50 for Asia Pacific Region for prevalence of modern slavery in the Global Slavery Index[1] (the lower the number the higher the risk). The other two, China and Sri Lanka are reported to have lower prevalence, but do have a certain level of risk.

(2) Impact

Understanding the impact of modern slavery in our supply chain, we were able to understand that women and girls are disproportionately vulnerable to modern slavery and can potentially account for 71 per cent of all victims. This led us to examine how and why females are vulnerable to modern slavery throughout their life cycle.

(3) Community Resilience

We have identified that the cycle of poverty and malnutrition can cause one tea growing community to be more vulnerable to trafficking or using bonded labourers, than another. Similarly, this is the reason why women and girls are more vulnerable to modern slavery. Our prevention programs apply a gender lens and are focussed on poorer areas.

In Assam, India, we are working with Children in Need India (‘CINI’) by supporting women and children to improve nutrition and access to education. Improving nutrition and education in the early years of childhood is also one our goals, which helps creates community resilience.

We are working collaboratively with CINI to conduct workshops in selected tea growing communities on:

  • Understanding how and why children are trafficked and how to protect them
  • Dangers of early childhood marriage
  • Importance of keeping girls in school
  • Supporting maternal and childhood nutrition and health

In the tea gardens we have been working with since 2019, we can report a significant reduction in the rate of child trafficking, missing persons and workers being unpaid for the labour.

We are using a similar approach of ‘Identifying the risk’ ‘Impact’ and ‘Building Community Resilience’ in Kenya and Sri Lanka with the aim for 2024 and 2025 to develop community based projects which show a similar reduction in the risk of slavery and breaches of human rights. We have already started working at the community level and hope to share these findings in next reporting year. As Assam is where we source a large volume of our teas and it is also one area most at risk to slavery, our focus has been on deepening our positive impact in this region.  

HOW WE MONITORING SUPPLIERS IN OUR SUPPLY CHAIN:

In order to act ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships, Ahmad Tea has taken the preventative steps to put Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards in place for all suppliers.

Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards, includes provisions against modern slavery and human trafficking, child labour, forced and compulsory labour, non-discrimination, wages and enhance whistleblowing procedures. This forms the basis of every contract of employment and contract for sale of goods we have in place. Any breach of our Standards will result in a breach of contract.

In the case of tea producers, we place the garden on amber warning and give them a time-frame in which to evidence corrective action and improved safeguarding. Our approach differs for tea suppliers due to our understanding that hundreds of workers rely on the income they make from picking tea and without a livelihood, we could be exasperating the risk of trafficking, bonded labour and slavery. Policies are in place to minimise any risk of slavery and trafficking in our supply chains by providing due diligence checks on our new contracts and suppliers.

HUMAN RIGHTS DUE DILIGENCE REPORTING:

  • Suppliers submit a bi-annual Human Rights Due Diligence Report (HRDD) to show compliance with our Social Responsibility Standards; wherein there is a duty to inform us of any issue as it the time it arises.
  • Ongoing awareness training to enhance whistleblowing and report any suspicious activity or concerns that they may have.
  • Any major or repeated breach of our Social Responsibility Standards results in breach of contract of sale. Ahmad Tea will report unlawful behaviour to the relevant authorities.

Our Legal Officer, specialised in Human Rights Law, is responsible for monitoring our Social Responsibility Standards and any risk of slavery or human trafficking within the Company. All subsidiaries, suppliers and partners submit their HRDD reports twice a year and we also conduct independent audits of our supply chain, which includes the tea gardens.

Our Legal officer is required to recommend ways in which we can improve our compliance with the Modern Slavery Act and continue to maintain our own high ethical standards. Ms Zahra Afshar can be contacted via her email zahra.afshar@ahmadtea.com

If you have any queries regarding this Statement please write to: The Legal Department, Ahmad Tea Ltd, Winchester Road, Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, England, UK, SO53 2PZ

We endeavour to uphold this Statement and Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards as best we can and with as much transparency as is achievable. We continue to be monitored by external auditors to ensure our business practices, quality, management and environmental standards are to the highest standard.

 

 

 

Approved by Mr Rahim Afshar, Chairman for Ahmad Tea on the 30th March 2024