Trip to india

[mickg]

Marshalls Fairstone Sawn and Riven Paving - A trip to India to see the stone processing factories and quarries in the Kota region of Rajasthan

In December 2013 we visited Stoneshippers stone processing factories in Kota to see how Marshalls Fairstone quarried, processed and finished before being transported to the UK

Please click on the link below

Our trip to Kota in India

[lutonlagerlout]

work of art that mick
you should get that stuck in a marshalls brochure a fair bit of wit there
i cant believe you let them put lipstick on your head :;):
very interesting travelogue
LLL

[Tony McC]

Excellent coverage, Mick.

It must really do your spirits good to look outside today and see that lovely non-stop downpour while thinking "this is so much better than India"

[higgness]

Great description of your visit, read it all.

[rab1]

Cracking write up Mick, really well done.

[mickg]

cheers guys

we were guests at the school and it was there way of welcoming us into their school

yeah your right Tony, spirits are certainly dampened by our weather over here that's for sure ...

[Tony McC]

Just how hot was it, Mick?

I keep getting invited to visit various quarries and producers out there but I'm really not good when it's very hot. Last summer in Britain was too much for me. As a son of Ireland raised in Lancashire, I really do need to be rained on at least once every three days or my skin starts to peel and flake.

[mickg]

I'm sure you would love it Tony in fact I know you would, I have been told the best time to go is after the monsoon season as their are very little if any mosquitoes in the Kota region and the weather is cooler but rising in temperature as the weeks go on. Chris the international product manager from Marshalls does not go to India after April as it get too hot and unbearable

the food was excellent, the hospitality was first class and I will certainly return in the near future now I know what to expect

When I went which was the first week in December in the evenings it was around the 11 degree mark up to 28 degrees during the day, it was not that cold at night just borderline on having to put a jumper on

[London Stone Paving]

Sounds like you had a great trip Mick. To see all that stuff for the first time is a real eye opener. Who won at snooker?

[mickg]

yeah it was a very good trip

which stuff for the first time ?

it was a very close game with each of us playing not very well at all but I would say Chris by a few points

[London Stone Paving]

which stuff for the first time ?

The quarries

The factories

The culture

The cows

The whole thing really. The first time I went there it was unlike anything else I had ever come across

Specifically about the stone, what took me by surpise was the sheer movement of stone in Kota and the surrounding areas. Every lorry is loaded up to the hilt, every spare bit of land is covered in piles of stone. Its everywhere.
There used to be an area in the centre of Kota called the stone market. Its been moved now but it was just a rabbit warren of small businesses all producing the same kota sandstone. Calibration has been a complete game changer over in India Smaller companies with no resources are no longer able to compete, at least in the export market

[mickg]

yeah gotya

like you say seeing all the transport is loaded up to the hilt like the tractors and trailers with the walling size stones brimming double height with no greedy boards and nothing tied on yet you only see a few stones lying in the road - Vosa would have a field day over in India

I agree the photo's I took of the primative way of calibration takes way to long to be cost effective when compared to the large machines what calibrate flags in a few seconds

[mickg]

I posted a link to the India trip on a landscaping forum and a member raised questions on child labour and what are Marshalls doing about it and why are the guys working in the quarries not wearing eye protection

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I'd be very interested to hear more about what Marshall's is doing differently to some of the many quarries that I saw when travelling in India (up to and including child labour). I had a look at their website but couldn't saee any policy statement or anything like that.

I would hope that these sorts of trade visits would provide some sort of scrutiny. However, am I the only one who would have liked to see these workers wearing, at the very least, some goggles when hand-working stone? Particularly given the cost of implementing the purchase of a few pairs of goggles (£1.99?), I think it would be worthwhile and might prevent someone suffering a life-changing injury. Particularly given India's lack of any sort of social safety net.

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I thought it was worthy of a reply especially when I attended a ETI meeting in November last year and came away requiring a few answers to questions myself which I did have explained to me while I was in India and have since found links to information relating to the same subject

My reply

I agree the workers should wear PPE but I don’t think it’s just about cost because if that was the case then it would have been done years ago and worker would be wearing goggles, ear defenders etc in all quarries in India. Many of the people who work in the quarries have over the years been provided with PPE such as goggles or glasses but I’m told that most don’t wear them, probably because its too hot and probably because they don’t understand why they should wear them. This is about behavioural change of the people and the community, and that is more of a longer term challenge.

Also considering only a small amount of the stone that comes from the majority of quarries in Kota is exported, many of the exporters have little sway with quarry owners to enforce it, especially when the workers or quarry owners don’t see or understand the value. I do know Marshalls & Stoneshippers have auditors on the ground that check the suppliers and part of their role is to try to educate the quarry workers in Health and Safety and help to provide equipment. Lets not forget, we are looking at this with British eyes in an Indian world. and yes that should be the standard, but it’s taken us many years to get to this level within our own country and some would say that we go overboard with Health & safety here in the UK It is a lot more complex an issue than just providing PPE in my opinion.

One thing I did see is in the quarry that Stoneshippers owned themselves, was the workers there are far better equipped with PPE than most. For example, all of the people in their factories wear ear defenders, but they are not just provided with PPE and forced to wear them. they are also educated as to why they have to and what could happen if they didn’t.

With regards to child labour everywhere we went I was looking all the time while travelling passed many of the 1,000 of places you see workers processing stone or when we stopped at the quarries we visited or the stone riven yards and I did not see any children working what so ever which to be honest was a great result

we did drive past 4 people working cutting small setts at the side of the road as we travelled to one of the quarries, 2 of workers did look young and short in height but driving past at 30 - 40 miles an hour down narrow roads in a blink we had past them, first impressions it was children working so on the way back we stopped but it turns out 2 of the workers were kneeling down instead of squatting like they normally do so it made them look small


Rather than copy and paste information from other sources the links below explain in detail what Marshalls, Stoneshippers and Unicef are doing to combat child labour

We can't turn a blind eye to child labour
http://www.building.co.uk/we-can%....article

Marshalls working in India
http://www.marshalls.co.uk/sustain....dia.pdf

Marshalls in India
http://www.marshalls.co.uk/dam-svc....129.pdf

Marshalls tackling child labour in India
http://www.ethicaltrade.org/in-acti....n-india

Leading hard landscaping company Marshalls and UNICEF UK have today announced a three year partnership to protect children working in the hazardous stone quarrying sector in India
http://live.unicef.org.uk/Media-c....n-India