Inter Press Service - October 25, 1999
Johanna Son

In the jungles of Indonesia's Irian Jaya province, the giant mining firm PT Freeport Indonesia conducts a campaign against HIV/AIDS among its employees, including 14,000 single male workers who indulge in high-risk behaviour with sex workers in the area.

In its estates spread over 500 km in south India, Tata Tea Ltd has invested in a programme to train, educate and counsel employees on sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, in what the firm says it hopes will "slow down the 'ripple effect of HIV/AIDS' in society.

These three Asian companies, along with others like them, are investing in these education and prevention schemes because they are starting to feel the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on their workforces.

The corporate logic behind having HIV/AIDS programmes is simple, says A K M Shamsuddin, president of the Foreign Investors Chamber of Commerce, which formed a local business network against HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh's case, for instance, he said companies "invest a lot in training our staff because literacy is limited" to boost productivity. "But with HIV that productivity is under threat."

"So this is also for our self-interest, to protect our investment. We need to be a change agent, to do what we need to do," Shamsuddin pointed out.

At the start of the Fifth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific here this weekend, 17 companies from the region signed a document on their commitment to continue fighting the pandemic.

More than just suffering physical difficulty, a person who has HIV/AIDS "may live with discrimination with families and communities, fear in the workplace, unemployment and the dehumanisation of the spirit", the group said in the document 'Business and AIDS: A Commitment to Action'.

With effective workplace programmes, companies can ease some of these realities, "as well as prevent an increase in absenteeism, healthcare costs and labour turnover, a decrease in productivity, loss of experienced personnel and the need for increased resources to hire and retrain replacements," it added. Business people do not always speak the language often heard from health experts, NGOs or governments.

"Several years ago it would have been very difficult to have a gathering like this," Dr Peter Piot, head of the United Nations Joint Action Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), said at the symposium where the document was signed.

But as the pandemic takes deeper root in the region, many companies are realising that their workers are vulnerable to HIV as well and that the costs are both human and economic, affecting the capacity of their workforces and likely to slow down overall economic growth and productivity.

Officials of American International Assurance, Thailand's largest insurance company with a work force of more than 26,000 agents and staff, say the firm has a "vested interest in the health and well-being of Thai society, as well as our clients".

AIA accredits companies with effective HIV/AIDS campaigns in the workplace, and rewards them with 5.0 to 10 percent discount on premiums on group life insurance policies.

A company brief says the lack of private sector programmes on the pandemic is due to the perception that they would get no benefit from such so "it is necessary to correct their misperceptions about AIDs and to create real and tangible benefits for companies to participate".

For PT Freeport Mining in Indonesia, its vice president, August Kafiar, says the warning sign about the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Irian Jaya was all too clear.

The eastern province, with two million people, statistically has the same number of people with HIV as the Indonesian capital Jakarta which has 10 million people. Irian Jaya, which borders Papua New Guinea, has the highest HIV prevalence in Indonesia, at 1.4 per 100,000 people.

As Irian Jaya was opened to commercial logging, exploration and mining, large number of immigrants came in and were joined by family and other in search of livelihood. Timika, from where Freeport operates its copper and gold mines, is a town centred around the mine's operations.

Some 75,000 people live in the Timika area, and along with the influx of immigrants a commercial sex industry with some 600 workers have come as well. When Freeport began its HIV/AIDS campaign in 1996, much of it necessarily targetted at its male workers, company officials say more than 50 percent of sex workers had sexually transmitted diseases and less than 5 percent of them reported clients using condoms.

Now, they say these statistics have improved markedly and condom usage rates are reported at more than 80 percent. Even if the real figure is 40 percent, a company brief claims, that would be one of the highest usage rates in Indonesia. "There is no apparent HIV case among employees," added Dr Steve Wignall of Freeport.

India's Tata Tea Ltd expanded its health services, which already included free medical care, to include surveys, training, education and counselling on HIV/AIDs and sexually transmitted diseases, after the first HIV/AIDS case was detected in its South Indian tea-planting district in December 1996.

"The health and welfare of the workforce directly influence the motivatioand therefore the productivity in a labour-intensive industry (like tea production)," explained Dr E Mohamed Rafique, medical officer for Tata Tea based in Kerala.

In Asia, private sector involvement has been pioneered by the Thailand Business Coalition on AIDS, which together with the Malaysian Business on AIDS got the 17 companies together at the Asia-Pacific conference on HIV/AIDS here.

Rafique suggested that it may be time for an international business coalition to be formed against the pandemic. Thai businessman Meechai Viravaidya, just appointed envoy on HIV/AIDS by UNAIDS, says the firms that signed the declaration "is not enough, that's just a handful".

"The most effective approach (to the pandemic) is the tripartite approach - governments, NGOs and the private sector. We must bring down the barriers to these three working together," said Marina Mahathir, head of the Malaysian AIDS Council, organiser of the AIDS congress and daughter of Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad.

Seven 7 million people in the Asia-Pacific have HIV and each year, nearly 700,000 young people aged 14-25 years become infected with HIV. "These young people represent the next generation of workers and leaders," said Lisa Messersmith, programme officer of the Ford Foundation.

Yet, the impact of having people in their most productive years becoming infected with HIV/AIDS is already being felt. Messersmith cited Thailand, which the United Nations says would have one-third of deaths in the working population occurring due to AIDS by next year.

She said, "Progressive business in the region view workers as valuable assets with rights to health and well-being. This kind of corporate responsibility makes very good business sense."

Clearly, too, the private sector cites HIV/AIDS campaigns as a plus for its image, as in the case of companies like Freeport whose environmental record has for years come under fire by green groups.

"Extractive mining industries are frequently under the gun from environmental and other groups for damage done by mining, overburdened management and related environmental and social impacts," Freeport's brief says. Programmes on HIV/AIDS and STDs provide a "positive reference point when discussing the negative impacts of mining activities". (END/IPS/ap-he-dv/js/99)
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