The family of a worker who was killed when a ceiling collapsed at Kompong Spue province footwear factory lasts week has accepted 9,000 in compensation, and in return has agreed not file a complaint against the company, the deceased’s wife said yesterday. …
Rim Sarouen, 22, was one of two workers who were crushed to death in the ceiling collapse at the Taiwanese-owned Wing Star Shoes Co Ltd., on May 16. Authorities said the collapse was due to construction work that had been illegally contracted. …
Korn Vet, the father of the second victim, Sim Srey Touch, 22, said …“We would demand more than $20,000. If they pay us, we won’t file a complaint against them. …
Dave Welsh, country head of the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based organisation advocating for worker rights, said a proper of compensation should be based on the workers’ salary, years of service lost and damages-which would bring it to 97,000. …
“Paying off a poor grief-stricken family with $9,000 sets a terrible precedent, not just in the garment industry, but for any worker in the industry,” he [Dave Welsh] said.
Mr. Wesh said the government should prosecute Wing Star.
About 5,000 garment workers from a factory in Kompong Speu province, which manufactures clothing for U.S sports giant Nike, yesterday blocked National Road 4 demanding additional allowances, such as transport and maternity bonuses, a union representative said.
The protest at Sabrina (Cambodia) Garment MFG Corp., in Samroing Tong district, has been going since Tuesday, said Sun Vanny, a Free Trade Union representative at the factory. …
Sabrina has previously come under media scrutiny for repeated incidents of mass fainting. In 2012, the Free Trade Union recorded that Sabrina had four separate incidents of faintings, affecting 340 workers. …
More than 20 people fainted yesterday at the Wing Star Shoes factory in Kampong Speu province, where two workers were crushed to death in a ceiling collapse last Thursday.
Workers and union officials said an electrical short-circuit scared workers returning for the first time since the tragedy.
Hong Seng Lim, president of the Development Movement Union of Cambodia Labour at Wing Star, said 21 workers were taken to hospital, but their conditions weren’t serious.
“An electric short-circuit made a loud noise, scaring workers and causing them to run out of the factory.”
Wing Star, a supplier to Japanese brand Asics, allowed its 7,000 workers the rest of the day off, Seng Lim said. …
The dining hall of a garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district that supplies clothes to U.S. brand Gap collapsed into a pond Monday, injuring more than 20 workers who were eating lunch, workers and officials said.
The hall, which is part of Top World Garment (Cambodia) Ltd. in Kbal Koh commune but outside the main building, collapsed at 11:40 a.m., according to commune police chief Mao Rith. …
The accident comes only five days after another factory in Kompong Speu province experienced a ceiling collapse that left two workers dead. Government and factory officials yesterday said the Taiwanese-owned Wing Star Shoes Co. Ltd. was safe enough for staff to go back to work.
“Tomorrow, the workers will return to work so that the production chain will not be affected,” said Oum Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of Labor. …
Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) election candidate Mu Sochua… said the CNRP is demanding a transparent inspection of Wing Star Shoes, as well as all the other factories in the country.
She also called for the prosecution of all the individuals who were involved in the oversight of the building’s illegal construction. …
Employees at a Taiwanese-owned shoe factory in Kompong Speu province where two workers were killed when one of the building’s floors collapsed on Thursday have been ordered back to work today, despite ongoing concerns from labor activists about the building’s safety.
While conceding that some parts of the building—including the section that collapsed—had been built without a permit and were potentially unstable, an official for the provincial department of land management said Sunday that workers could safely return to work as “warning signs” would be erected to avert employees from parts of the factory still deemed unsafe.
“There are two illegal extensions to the building, which have to be removed,” said Mam Narey, bureau chief of the provincial construction department. “We cannot keep them because it is very dangerous for the workers.” …
The mezzanine level of the Wing Star Shoes Co. Ltd. in Kong Pisei district collapsed on Thursday morning, crushing workers who were arriving at the factory. According to the authorities, steel beams holding up the concrete flooring buckled under the weight of boxes of shoes due to shoddy construction done without a permit. …
“Safe and ethical working conditions are of paramount importance to ASICS. We have launched our own investigation into the cause of the incident in full cooperation with the relevant authorities. In addition to our ASICS staff already on site, two representatives plus related people from ASICS corporation headquarters will travel to Phnom Penh and personally evaluate progress of investigations,” said Katsumi Funakoshi, general manager of public relations department for ASICS.
“The decision to re-open or continue to work with this factory would be considered after the result of investigation by ourselves, by the third party and by the government,” he added. …
“Just like in a house, when you build a small roof for the dog, and if that small roof collapses, you will not suggest that the whole house is going to collapse,” [ Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia chairman] Mr. [Van] Sou Leng said. …
He also said that the paying of money to families of the dead and injured over the weekend was “insulting.”
“There’s the criminal aspect of an illegal construction that resulted in the death of workers,” Mr. Welsh said. “To think that they are offering money to families over the weekend to prevent the criminal suit is ludicrous and frankly should not stand.”
According to Ms. Hour, the factory representative, nine of the injured workers who went to Calmette Hospital had received $1,700 each. Victims with minor injuries at the district referral hospital received $550 each, she said.
“For each dead victim, the factory donated $6,500 to each family to hold the funeral,” Ms. Hour said. “We wanted to negotiate compensation with them but right now, they don’t want to talk. They need time.” …
Cambodia has dispatched 4,779 workers to Thailand, South Korea and Japan in the first three months of this year, according to a report from the Ministry of Labor on Friday.
During the January-March period this year, the country sent 4, 100 workers to Thailand, 678 workers to South Korea, and one worker to Japan, the report said.
Cambodian laborers work in industries and construction in Thailand, in the fields of manufacture, agriculture, construction and fishing in South Korea, and in small-sized industries in Japan. …
Currently, about 125,000 Cambodian laborers are working legally in Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan. Those migrant workers have sent home about 200 million US dollars a year, the Ministry of Labor said. …
2012 has been an impressive year for Cambodia’s economic resilience. Among the many sectors that had positively grown are the construction and property development [sic] and they are expected to be among the highest growth achievers in the current year as well. …
In 2012, the Ministry of Land Management recorded investments on construction had grown by 72 percent to US$2,109 million for 1,694 projects covering 6.5 million square meters, an increase from the previous US$1.2 billion for 2,125 projects covering 4.2 million square meters in 2011. …
Amid the last year’s strong recovery, construction on residential projects such as ‘Borey’ and apartments claimed a large proportion (about 70 percent off the total projects) and is likely to surge higher responding to the growing local populations (about 10,000 new families are added to Phnom Penh annually), along with more incoming foreign nationals for living and business purposes which require more residential supplies. …
Due to development disparity, growth varies between zones. The property market recovery has appeared vigorously only at the popular industrialized zones such as Phnom Penh’s downtown, leaving the low industrialized areas like suburbs and rural areas less commercialized. …
With more investors coming, Kheng observes now international firms are competing with the local property developers as they begin to understand more about the local markets, knowledge which they previously lacked. …
The important thing in this property business, according to Cheng Kheng is having accurate data. “The key to improve this industry is to have a one-stop recording center where all transactions have been recorded properly and published to the public. In that way, it will be easier for the public to keep themselves up-to-date with the market.” …
Thai factories have opted to hire Cambodian workers under a memorandum of understanding between Cambodia and Thailand after the Bt300 minimum wage policy came into effect for Thai workers across the country.
A total of 154 Cambodians – 118 men and 36 women – with work permit documents crossed the border in Sa Kaew’s Aranyaprathet district on Monday. …
Farmers in Pailin province have complained about a shortage of workers during this year’s corn and cassava harvesting season.
Meas Loeun, team leader of Momean Moy community’s 38 teams in Pailin, said the shortage of workers to help harvest corn and cassava is a major challenge for plantation owners because many workers have migrated to Thailand. …
The seventh investment–trade–tourism promotion conference for the Cambodia–Laos–Vietnam development triangle took place in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum on December 5.
The event attracted the participation of representatives from over 400 domestic and foreign businesses. …
Vietnam is investing in 50 projects worth close to 1.7 billion USD in Laos, and 25 projects valued at 1.5 billion USD in Cambodia. …
When the government decided to raise the daily minimum wage to 300 baht nationwide, labour-intensive industries knew sunset was descending on their businesses. …
As a leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for popular clothes lines in Thailand, the company is relocating its largest production site to northwest Cambodia to escape high wage costs. …
In a single factory that supplies some of the biggest international brands, faintings occurred every day for five years, a new investigation by the Cambodian Legal Education Centre has found.
Until just weeks ago, when the management installed new fans, three to four garments workers were fainting or collapsing at the M&V garment factory in Kampong Chhnang province, CLEC uncovered through interviews with nearly two dozen employees.
The workers, line leaders and union officials were split up into different groups and interviewed by CLEC on October 20 at M&V; all provided the same response. Those results were corroborated by the Post’s own interviews with workers who said at least one or two workers fainted each day for years. …
China’s rising wages and shrinking export demand are forcing manufacturers to relocate to neighbouring Southeast Asian nations and many that remain are seriously considering moving, a foreign trade official from the Ministry of Commerce said…
Buyers have “turned their eyes to manufacturers from Southeast Asian countries”, he noted, which has forced him to plan to relocate part of his business.
“We will try Cambodia, where labour costs are about just one quarter of what we have in the Pearl River Delta,” he said…
The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) program must overhaul its monitoring practices before it can meaningfully improve working conditions in the garment sector, accoring to the authors of a new report. …
…the new report by Community Legal Education Center and the Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, entitled 10 Years of Better Factories Cambodia Project, questions whether BFC has the capacity to do its job thoroughly.
According to the report, the BFC is not making enough on-site visits to properly monitor factories, averaging just one visit per factory per year, while the majority of inspections are announced ahead of time, giving the factory management the chance to potentially hide violations. …
BFC only releases general reports to the public while individual factory reports are given only to the factories themselves, creating no incentive for reform among factories, the report adds.
Jill Tucker, chief technical adviser for BFC, said she agreed with most of the points in the report’s assessment, emphasizing that BFC is limited by its small staff. Ms. Tucker added that the organization is currently working to make more of their findings public.
“It’s true that we are not equipped to respond to personal complaints. There are some 400,000 workers and only 13 monitors. However, we do have a system to track those complaints,” she said. …
Human and sex trafficking complaints had increased markedly this year, with police vowing to redouble their resources to fight the rampant crimes, officials said at a summit on Friday.
Mok Chito, head of the General Secretariat of the National Police Commissioner’s central judicial department, said 113 people had been arrested in the first eight months of 2012 for involvement in human and sex trafficking rackets.
A total of 315 trafficked Cambodians have been repatriated so far – 181 were maids, mostly from Malaysia, Chito said. …
The number of arrests, Cambodians repatriated and complaints filed to police about international human and sex trafficking – 370 – had all increased from 2011, Chito said. …
An investigation by garment factory monitor Better Factories Cambodia into the alleged sexual harassment of four female employees at Ocean Garment uncovered extensive verbal abuse, according to BFC technical adviser Jill Tucker.
A BFC team visited the Dangkor district site on August 24 after a group of more than 2500 workers rallied behind six women who claimed manager Faruk Ahamed made sexual advances, striking from August 11 until last Friday.
Tucker said that although relations in the Bangladeshi-owned factory were very poor, BFC could not confirm the sexual harassment claims, which are still being dealt with by police and Phnom Penh Municipal Court after the women filed criminal complaints almost two weeks ago. …
Almost 150 garment factory workers from two Phnom Penh factories fainted late last week after inhaling toxic fumes used to treat clothes, workers and union leaders said yesterday.
The mass faintings came as the Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center released an evaluation report on garment factory watchdog Better Factories Cambodia, highlighting the poor occupational health and safety standards that plague the industry.
Free Trade Union official Oum Lina said more than 100 workers from Hi Fashion in the capital’s Sen Sok district were rushed to state hospitals and private clinics on Friday. …
Meanwhile, 36 workers at Conpress Holding Industrial in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district fainted on Thursday and Friday. …
Better Factories Cambodia must name and shame garment factories that abuse the labour law if it is to transform Cambodia into an ethical sourcing option, a report on the International Labor Organization initiative says.
Better Factories should make monitoring reports public, according to the 10 Years of the Better Factories Cambodia Project report, released on Thursday by Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center. …
Better Factories, which monitors 374 garment factories and nine shoes factories, should also pressure the government to charge factories that break the law, hold international buyers more accountable for working conditions and monitor sub-contractors. …
The number of incoming business people from Wenzhou, a Chinese coastal city of three million known for manufacturing, has grown markedly in recent years.
So much, in fact, that Wezhou opened an official chamber of commerce in Phnom Penh last week.
Labour and land costs on China’s eastern seaboard have pushed some manufacturers out of the city, which is about 500 kilometres south of Shanghai. …
High production costs and a lack of government assistance is keeping rice farmers near the poverty line despite unprecedented growth in the sector, according to a new study released by local microfinance institution Intean Poalroath Rongroeurng (IPR).
The independent study, conducted by two Cambodian researchers and two anthropologists from Sweden’s Uppsala University, examines rice farms in Takeo province and the costs of plant medicine and raw materials such as seeds and fertilizer. Those items alone equal more than 40 percent of the revenues earned from harvested rice, according to the study, which was released Thursday.
Other costs such as labor, machinery irrigation, fuel and interest on loans must be paid with whatever
is left over. As a result, most farmers are still living on 2,500 riel, or about $0.66, per day or less, while others operate at a loss and rely on remittances from family members who have migrated to Phnom Penh or Thailand. …
