Human Rights
CHALLENGES
OPERATIONAL GUIDELINES
CKPower has established a human rights policy to declare its intent to uphold human rights in its business operations in accordance with the United Nations Framework and Guiding Principles on across the value chain, encompassing CKPower and its subsidiaries, suppliers, related businesses (such as joint ventures), rights holders, and vulnerable groups.
CKPower has provided dedicated communication and complaint channels for human rights violations or impact against rights holders and vulnerable groups as well as put in place suitable and fair measures for mitigation, rectification, and remediation.
Targets
2022 targets
Long-term targets
CKPower has formulated strategies to establish the direction of its corporate sustainability operations. Human rights constitute a vital issue for driving corporate sustainability and for striving towards becoming an organization that serves as a model of human rights, both directly through its business activities and indirectly through its promotion of business practices that recognize, protect, and respect human rights among its suppliers. In addition, CKPower set targets to measure its success with regard to human rights.
Execution
Human Rights Roadmap
CKPower has developed a human right roadmap for a five-year period from 2022 to 2026 to establish clear targets and directions for human rights promotion and protection and to enable the assessment and reduction of human rights risks in the future.
2022 key activities
- To create value and further expand its projects, CKPower fostered human rights awareness and increased engagement with all stakeholders across the value chain on the basis of respect for human rights.
- Engagement with internal stakeholders: Internal stakeholders refer to employees. CKPower organized human rights training for 100% of its personnel, focusing on respecting fundamental rights and embracing diversity in the organization to ensure harmony in the workplace amidst diversity.
- Engagement with external stakeholders:
- Suppliers: CKPower elevated its human rights risk management process to reduce the risk of violation and improve the quality of life in the workplace with respect to labor, health, safety, and well-being. In addition, the Company educated the suppliers to foster awareness and understanding and conducted random site visits, during which no human rights violation was found.
- Communities: CKPower fostered engagement and conducted projects on the basis of respect for human rights to foster job security and elevate the quality of life for communities around its power plant and in society at large.
- Customers: CKPower delivered electricity to all customers with reliability and operated with a commitment to safety, which is a fundamental right, in order to enhance the quality of life in the Company and its subsidiaries.
- CKPower joined the progress assessment of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC).
- CKPower investigated cases of human rights violations and revised its impact mitigation measures.
- CKPower revised its human rights complaint handling and response process.
Human Rights Due Diligence
CKPower carried out human rights due diligence, consisting of five main steps:
The human rights due diligence applies to all business sites of CKPower across the value chain and is conducted to establish guidelines for the effective management of operational areas where risks are present. The guidelines specify measures for preventing or mitigating impacts of human rights risks on CKPower’s business operations across the value chain and identify relevant human rights risks as well as prescribe the assessment of impact on risk groups or vulnerable groups, such as children, ethnic groups, and foreign labors and the assessment of impact likelihood. The criteria for human right risks assessment comprise two factors, namely likelihood and impact, encompassing nine human rights topics.
| TOPIC | Right Holders | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee | Suppliers | Customers | Communities | |
| 1. CKPower Working Conditions | ||||
| 2. CKPower Health & safety | ||||
| 3. CKPower Discrimination and Harassment | ||||
| 4. Freedom of Association and Right to Collective Bargaining) | ||||
| 5. Illegal Forms of Labor including Human Trafficking, Forced Labor, Child Labor | ||||
| 6. Standards of Living | ||||
| 7. Land Acquisition and Forced Re-settlement | ||||
| 8. Data Privacy | ||||
| 9. Security Management | ||||
CKPower has planned to conduct comprehensive human rights audits every three years. The human rights risk assessment in 2021 revealed an area of high risk, which was health and safety. The other risk issues were at low to moderate levels and could be managed with CKPower’s existing operational guidelines.
As for the residual risks following the formulation of prevention and mitigation guidelines to address the high level of health and safety risk, CKPower has established risk reduction and control measures to control potential impacts both in terms of the likelihood and severity, including the addition of occupational health and safety procedures and the provision of health services to employees. In addition, CKPower is actively monitoring the effectiveness of such measures to ensure that its human rights management can effectively control impacts across the value chain.
In addition, CKPower regularly coordinates with its safety units and informs them of employee health and safety issues with high risks of violation as well as measures developed to mitigate such risks. The safety units are then required to report the implementation of such measures to CKPower’s division of human resource at least once a year to ensure that the measures are effective and there is no human rights violation.
Performance
2022 Achievements
Human Rights Awareness Projects and Activities
New Employee Orientation
Since 2019, CKPower has added content on human rights and the human rights policy to its new employee orientation program in order to instill awareness among employees from their very first day at the company that CKPower places the utmost importance on compliance with international standards on human rights. The Company has also improved its orientation program to include human rights training through VDO conference and undertaken an initiative to enable employees in all work areas to attend orientation via mobile application.
Labor Practices
Human resources are a major driving force that enables an organization to achieve its goals. As such, CKPower has continuously placed importance on human resource operations through a corporate human resource management approach that aims to treat all stakeholders equally with no discrimination based on gender, nationality, religion, language, social status, or any other status related to all stakeholders, as well as the use of forced labor or child labor, either for direct hires or throughout the entire supply chain. In addition, CKPower has established a policy for fair and appropriate compensation based on the skills and performance of employees in addition to offering welfare and benefits which are competitive in comparison to other companies within the industry.
Human Rights Training and Communication
To promote responsible business operations and respect for human rights, CKPower has communicated human rights principles through various channels, such as virtual meetings through Microsoft Team and mobile applications and training for 100% of its personnel at all levels. In 2022, as a result of these initiatives, CKPower’s employees were aware of its human rights policy, international human rights practices, and the connection between human rights issues and their roles and responsibilities, which in turn bolstered their understanding of the impact of human rights violation. In addition, thanks to the human rights training, no complaint related to human rights violations was reported to CKPower.
Human Rights Assessment and Awareness Building for Suppliers
To reiterate its commitment to the prevention of human rights violation, CKPower strives to foster human rights understanding and awareness among its suppliers. To this end, it has incorporated human rights issues into the vendor risk assessment and conducts random on-site audits annually. In 2022, CKPower required 130 high-risk Tier 1 suppliers to conduct vendor self-assessments and provided training to 28 suppliers, accounting for 100% and 21.5% of the total number of vendors in each category, respectively. None of the vendors were found to be at risk of human right violations.
Human Rights Awareness Building in Communities
CKPower raises human rights awareness in communities surrounding its power plants and gives them equal opportunities to express their opinions and take part in developing the quality of life in their locality in collaboration with the Company. In addition, CKPower reviews human rights risks and impacts on a yearly basis. In 2022, CKPower carried out such initiatives in 100% of the comm unities around its power plants, and none was found to be at risk of human right violations.
Education Quality Enhancement Project for Equality
CKPower constructed a building for Hin Hua Seua Kindergarten in Xaisomboun in Lao PDR using the concept of universal design in order to increase opportunities for learning and education and expand learning spaces suitable for students of all genders and ages as well as students with disabilities, in line with the standard of Lao PDR’s Ministry of Education and Sports. In addition, CKPower installed a solar-powered underground water pump and a water filtration system to create a system that produced drinking water that meets the standard of Lao PDR and the World Health Organization.