Workers at the world’s largest iPhone factory in central China have fled in dramatic scenes after authorities closed the facility due to a Covid outbreak.
Disturbing videos have emerged showing Foxconn employees escaping the company’s compound in Zhengzhou, traveling back to their hometowns on foot to avoid the nation’s strict sanctions for breaching the lockdown.
China has remained steadfast in its ability to achieve Covid-zero and continues to apply tough measures to the country’s 1.4 billion people nearly three years after the initial outbreak.
Henan province, where Zhengzhou is located, officially reported 42 new Covid infections on Monday alone.
In one video, workers can be seen carrying suitcases up a hill, while another shows people sitting with their luggage on the side of a road as a person in a hazmat suit sprays what appears to be disinfectant.
Another video shows workers in hazmat suits crowding around the compound with a voice shouting “murderer” and “everyone dead in room 726”.
A woman who claimed to have helped her 19-year-old brother escape the compound said rubbish had piled up inside and workers had to eat only bread to survive.
“Foxconn got it wrong, I don’t think many people would want to go back. I know they wouldn’t,” the woman said via Bloomberg.
The Taiwanese company, which supplies iPhones to US tech firm Apple, said it was “cooperating with the government to arrange staff and vehicles” for employees who want to leave.
Foxconn has said it faces a “protracted battle” to end the Covid-19 outbreak, but has not said how many of its more than 200,000 employees are affected or isolated.
The company has been accused of forcing unwell employees to work and failing to provide medical treatment or timely meals throughout the outbreak.
And China Labor Watch, a New York-based NGO, has also accused the company of hiding the number of Covid-19 infections among its employees and forcing the sick to continue working, citing an internal message in staff and factory workers. .
Foxconn has insisted it is “making every effort” to ensure its employees are taken care of.
China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with rapid lockdowns, mass testing and long quarantines to try to reduce infections.
But fast-spreading virus variants have challenged that approach, with outbreaks hitting industries hard in recent months as virus restrictions disrupt factories and curb consumer spending.
Henan authorities pledged on Monday to quell any outbreak, with provincial Communist Party chief Lou Yangsheng urging officials to “do everything possible to fight and win the war of annihilation against the epidemic.”
There would be “absolutely no relaxation” in disease control work, especially in densely populated areas such as schools, hospitals, factories and nursing homes, Lou said, according to a statement on a provincial government social media account.
Officials “must resolutely overcome psychological laxity, war weariness and wait-and-see thinking, and fully implement labor requirements in a strict, meticulous and practical manner,” Lou said, without reference to the situation at Foxconn.
The images came after 28 cities, including virus ground zero Wuhan, were placed under a wave of new lockdown measures.
Data published in The Sun Online by economic analysis firm Nomura showed that some 208 million people are currently living in some level of lockdown in China.
Officials have described the variants as “highly contagious” as they can also infect people who were previously immune.
Quarantine camps, food shortages, police seizing people’s homes and drones patrolling the streets have been reported in China as Xi Jinping refuses to back down on his policy of elimination of covid.
However, Covid Zero has been described as a “self-made trap” for the Communist Party as the economy continues to collapse under the weight of austerity measures.
Virologist Jin Dongyan of the University of Hong Kong told The Washington Post: “If they open now, there will be a major outbreak immediately.
“However, even if they don’t open, sooner or later there will be a major outbreak somewhere.”
The scientists added that the approach is “not sustainable” and “someone has made a bad judgement”.
“They misjudged the situation in the world and can’t get out of their own comfort zone,” he said.
— with the AFP
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