Olympic chiefs vow crackdown on child labour

BEIJING Olympics organisers vowed yesterday to come down hard on any cases of children being used to produce merchandise for the Games, after a report accused factories of “gross exploitation”.

The report by the Playfair Alliance, released in London, said Chinese children as young as 12 were involved in packaging licensed stationery products for next year’s Games at a factory in southern China.

Vice chairman of the Beijing Games organising committee (BOCOG) Jiang Xiaoyu said he took such issues seriously and sought “to protect the reputation of the Olympic movement and the Beijing Olympic Games”.