Penneys to investigate fresh claims of "cry for help" notes

There have been two more reports of hand-sewn pleas for help from factory workers - one in Belfast and another in Wales.

Penneys to investigate fresh claims of "cry for help" notes

Two more shoppers in Wales and Belfast have come forward, claiming to have discovered notes from factory workers inside clothes bought in Primark.

Earlier this week, we brought you this story of Rebecca Gallagher who found a label sewn inside a dress she bought in a Primark (which trades as Penney's in Ireland) in Swansea, Wales. The hand-stitched note read: "Forced to work exhausting hours".

Another woman, Rebecca Jones, has since come forward with another label that she found in a summer dress bought last year in the same Swansea Primark. This one bears the words: “Degrading sweatshop conditions”.

“I was really shocked when I saw the label saying it was degrading sweatshop conditions," said Jones.

“I used to shop a lot at Primark but not so much now. The label has made me think about how my clothes are made."

In Belfast, a shopper from Co. Fermanagh contacted Amnesty International when she discovered a hand-written note earlier this week inside a pair of trousers.

The note, headed "SOS! SOS! SOS!", has been translated by Amnesty from the original Chinese into English. It reads: "We are prisoners in the Xiang Nan Prison of the Hubei Province in China. Our job inside the prison is to produce fashion clothes for export."

"We work 15 hours per day and the food we eat wouldn't even be given to dogs or pigs. We work as hard as oxen in the field."

"We call on the international community to condemn the Chinese government for the violation of our human rights!"

Karen Wisinka told UTV news that she bought the trousers in 2011 but they had been unworn until now.

"I am only sorry that I did not discover the note when I first purchased the clothing - then I could have brought this scandal to light much earlier."

While Primark are said to be taking all the allegations "very seriously", the company - in a statement to the BBC - have questions over the latest claim.

"We find it very strange that this has come to light so recently, given that the trousers were on sale four years ago. We will be contacting the customer to obtain the trousers, so we can investigate how this occurred and whether there are issues which need to be looked into," the statement said.

"Nine inspections of the supplier have been carried out by Primark's ethical standards team since 2009. To be clear, no prison or other forced labour of any kind was found during these inspections."

Patrick Corrigan, programme director for Amnesty in Northern Ireland admits that there it will be hard to prove these reports.

"It's very difficult to know whether it's genuine, but the fear has to be that this is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.

Primark have come under fire for their worker conditions before - most recently after the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh.

The company have launched an immediate investigation into the allegations.

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