China's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, announced late last week that it will raise salaries of its workers in China by about 20 per cent to stifle criticism on its working conditions that has possibly led to a string of suicides by its workers.

"It is not because of the suicides," said Foxconn spokesperson Edmund Ding outside the factory gates at the company's massive Longhau factory in the southern industrial city of Shenzhen, "The discussion has been going on for a long time."

To stem the suicides by workers leaping to their deaths from the Chinese mainland factories of Taiwanese electronics company Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, operating in China as Foxconn, the management at Foxconn has also deployed anti-suicide nets at its Longhau factory on Saturday.

Taipei County, Taiwan-based Hon Hai is the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer and employs 800,000 people on the Chinese mainland with 300,000 people working in the walled-in industrial park of its Longhau factory.

It is dubbed as one of the worlds's most isolated and secretive companies, churning out products for Nintendo, Apple, Nokia, Sony, Hewlett Packard and Dell.

Labour activists from Hong Kong have accused the company of having an extremely fast assembly line, employees forced to work excess overtime, a rigid management style and harsh discipline imposed on employees that many people believe stems out of chairman Terry Gou's past military exposure.

Dubbed as a "sweatshop" by activists, at least 16 people have jumped from the company's factories in China so far this year, with 12 reported deaths. A further 20 employees, who attempted to commit suicides, were stopped by officials in the company before they could throw themselves off from the buildings.

Late last week, Gou visited the Longhau factory and gave a guided tour to the media amid public anger and criticism to the spate of suicides at Foxconn.

Although the factory boasts of palm tree-lined streets, swimming pools, tennis courts, fast-food restaurants, banks, a bookstore, 500 LED screens, factory buildings, massive dormitories, employees complain that they have no time to use any of these facilities.

In the evening after the guided tour to journalists, a worker leapt to his death, while another tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists.

With 2009 revenues of $61.8 billion, the company is owned and run by chairman Gou, ranked 136 on Forbes 2010 list of the world's richest people, having a net worth of $5.5 billion. He is also Taiwan's richest person.

With a market capitalisation of over $33 billion, the company was placed among the 50 best of Asia-Pacific's biggest listed companies by Forbes in 2010. (See: Harsh working conditions at Foxconn fuel suicidal tendencies)