HEG Electronics, the parts supplier of Samsung and Lenovo in China, was recently accused by a labor watchdog group of using child labor in its manufacturing facility, Tech Times reported.

The allegations were detailed in a report released by the group China Labor Watch (CLW).

According to the group, HEG's plant in China's Guangdong Province employs children under 16 years of age. CLW claims the company's youngest employee is 14 years old.

In addition, CLW stated that the company has more than 100 students in its workforce. Reportedly, these student-employees were not being compensated for their overtime and do not the sufficient night shift subsidies.

CLW's findings were based on an interview the group's executive director Li Qiang had with a 19-year-old female student who used to work for HEG's Samsung line of products. According to the student, in addition to her regular eight-hour shift, she also had to work overtime for four hours.

For her overtime work, she was paid 8.5 RMB, which is equivalent to $1.38 per hour. Qiang said the overtime pay should be at least 1.5 times more.

The girl also revealed that HEG refused to release the payments of the other student-workers when they resigned from the company before the start of the school year.

In addition to the child labor allegations, CLW also stated that HEG's facility has poor work conditions and requires each employee to work for at least 100 hours of overtime. The company also enforces labor procedures which require employees to work while standing for 13 hours.

In response to CLW's report, Samsung launched an onsite investigation on the HEG factory and one-on-one interviews with its employees, according to CNET.

"We immediately notified our findings to CLW and also proposed that Samsung and CLW conduct a joint onsite investigation for more precise verification," a spokesperson for Samsung said. "Furthermore, we proposed briefing Samsung's recruitment process that includes ID verification and face-to-face interview."

Samsung, however, mentioned that despite the findings of the investigation, CLW did not include them in its report.

"We find it regrettable that CLW issued the allegations today without any mention of our statement," the spokesperson said. "At Samsung Electronics, we deeply care about the health and safety of all our employees and employees at our suppliers and strictly maintain a zero tolerance policy on child labor."

Lenovo, on the other hand, stated that it also looked into the matter but declined to provide details of its investigation.