Hon Hai Group Chairman Terry Gou announced Tuesday a new policy of not making condolence and consolation payments to the families of Chinese employees who commit suicide.

He also said the group is turning over the taking care of employees and managing of dormitories at factories in mainland China to local Chinese authorities.

At a general shareholders meeting in Taipei Tuesday, Gou said the group will raise wages not only at its factories in Shenzhen in southern China, but at those in other regions such as Jiangsu and Shandong depending on the different level of living costs in various regions.

Gou also outlined ambitious and generous plans to help employees launch their own business ventures.

He spent much time sharing his pain over the successive suicide attempts by some employees at his group's Shenzhen complex in Guangdong province.

As part of the group's efforts to stem the suicide attempts, it will no longer offer compensation equivalent to 10 years of wages to the families of suicide victims, Gou said.

The decision was made after one of the workers who attempted to commit suicide was found to have told his family in a suicide note that the company will pay them a large sum of money if he succeeded in ending his own life.

Gou said that investigations by Chinese authorities have found none of the 10 suicides at his group's industrial complex in Shenzhen had anything to do with the working conditions there.

He told the group's shareholders that Chinese authorities sent a team of more than 200 officials and experts to conduct a thorough 10-day on-site investigation into the possible reasons behind the incidents at the Shenzhen complex that maintains a large workforce of more than 400,000 people.

“I told the Chinese investigators that they should detain me immediately if I am found guilty, but they should clear me of the accusations if I am not,” Gou said.

Gou took more than 200 reporters on a tour to show them the conditions at the company's Shenzhen complex in China on May 25 after the ninth worker at Foxconn Technology — as Hon Hai is known in China — jumped to his death from the company's factory building earlier that day.

The following day, another Foxconn worker jumped to his death, bringing the total number of suicides to 10 and the number of attempts to 12; fueling criticism that Gou is “running a blood and sweat factory.”

“It's regrettable that after touring the Shenzhen complex, many journalists still tried to vilify me and Hon Hai rather than find out the truth,” Gou said.

Gou said that after the unprecedented, thorough investigation, Chinese officials did not “detain” him, proving that Hon Hai was not at fault.

“None of the 12 suicide attempts at the Shenzhen complex were a result of poor working conditions or low salaries as has been alleged,” Gou stressed.

He said he would not rule out the possibility of suing media organisations or journalists for their groundless and slandering reports.

Citing surveys in China, he said more than 100 million people in China suffer from various types of mental disorders and 16 million of them are categorized as being in “serious condition.”

Based on these statistics, the percentage of attempted suicides among Foxconn's 450,000 workers in Shenzhen is substantially lower than the percentage of mentally ill people in China's total population, Gou said.

Gou expressed regret that he did not realise the seriousness of the suicide incidents at his plants in their initial stage.

However, Gou emphasised that he has successfully prevented dozens of possible tragedies after his personal participation in the handling of the suicide issue.

Meanwhile, several labour rights groups held a protest in front of Hon Hai's headquarters in Taipei County Tuesday, calling for the workers' right to form an independent union at the top industrial conglomerate.

The protesters also asked the government to withdraw the capital investments from the nation's labour pension fund from Hon Hai stocks. Taiwan workers should have the right to supervise the company's management if the fund is to continue to hold large chunks of Hon Hai shares, they argued.