News

A new made-service company that claims to be the only one of its kind in Cambodia is offering an alternative employment option for the country’s many domestic workers who face insecure, and often abusive, workplace conditions overseas. Ming Hour Home Service, which opened in July, employs ...

Some 285 million workers will migrate for employment when ASEAN countries open their borders to each other in 2015, Prime Minister Hun Sen predicted yesterday, as he urged speedier regional legislative action to ensure they could travel safely. At an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Council meeting, the premier warned ...

The owner of a labor firm repeatedly accused of human trafficking, who is also the sister of one of the country’s top police officials, has been appointed head of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA). Grave concerns have been expressed by rights groups over the appointment of Ung Seang ...

Workers from bankrupt plush-toy factory First & Main are still owed money after the Ministry of Social Affairs auctioned $200,000 worth of factory equipment for just $21,000, a labor rights advocate said Sunday. More than 350 workers were left stranded when the US-owned teddy bear factory closed in ...

A Chinese factory manager sparked a near-riot in Phnom Penh yesterday morning after publicly destroying two photos of the late King Father in front of hundreds of workers. More than a thousand employees of the Top World garment factory launched an immediate strike, and threatened to ...

In a rare intervention, the Thai Labor Ministry has stepped in to stop the exploitation of migrant workers from Cambodia and Myanmar at a seafood factory in the country’s south, correspondence obtained by the Post reveals. The ministry found the Phatthana Seafood factory, in Songkhla province, which employs ...

Six people were arrested in three separate incidents for trying to send 236 Cambodians into Thailand where they were to work illegally, police said yesterday. Prak Saony, Kompong Chhnang provincial anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection bureau police chief, said that police arrested five people in a ...

The Free Trade Union expects thousands of workers from across the country to join FTU president Chea Mony in paying respects to the late King Father Norodom Sihanouk on Tuesday.   To make up for the lost day of work, workers will instead work on October ...

Residents in Phnom Penh have been warned to expect a buildup of garbage as at least half of the city’s garbage collectors will be on holidays for nine days beginning Thursday. An announcement on the Phnom Penh Municipality’s website, posted Friday, said residents should expect disruptions ...

About 600 Tae Young factory workers are back on the job thanks to a court injunction – and the desire to pocket a little cash in time for Pchum Ben – but the return will only be temporary, workers said yesterday. The decision followed a Kandal ...

Officials from the government  U.N. and human rights groups on Friday put forward amendments to draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) that is designed to impose safeguards for Cambodians to travel to work as maids in Malaysia. While the original draft by the Malaysian government sets out the responsibility of ...

Cambodia is being considered as a site for halal food production and rice milling by the United Arab Emirates, according to the UAE’s Foreign Trade Minister Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi yesterday. Speaking during an official meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen at the Peace ...

The salary for Cambodian civil servants has seen an average increase of 540 per cent compared to salaries in 2001, according to a report from the national news agency Agence Kampuchea Presse last Thursday.   Yim Serey Vathanak, national project coordinator on trade unions for social ...

Workers at shuttered plush-toy company First & Main claimed yesterday their bosses had forced them to thumbprint resignation letters they had not written, a plan they feared could deny them severance pay. Mech Mom, a representative of the 357 workers at the US-owned factory, in the ...

When 29-year-old store manager Srey Mom sent her mother in Takeo province some money to pay young people to help with the rice planting, her mother told her it was no use – the young people had abandoned the village to seek their fortunes in ...

The Kandal Provincial Court yesterday questioned labor leader Rong Chhun over allegations he incited garment factory workers to stage an illegal strike, a court official said. A director at the Tai Yang garment factory in Ang Snuol district- which supplies apparel to U.S. brands Levi Strauss, ...

The president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions Rong Chhun appeared in Kandal Provincial Court for nearly three hours yesterday, fielding questions stemming from accusations of incitement and defamation, the union boss said. According to Chhun, his appearance was related to a complaint alleging that he had incited ...

Most mornings, garment worker Vicheka buys food from the street vendors outside her factory in Kampong Chhnang province. The beef and pork dishes, she says, have a tendency to give workers a stomach ache – a reputation forged long before Vicheka and her co-workers at ...

Employees at the First & Main cuddly-toy company arrived at work yesterday expecting to be paid outstanding wages – instead, a notice on the gates told them all equipment inside the Phnom Penh factory would be auctioned off, because the company was closing for good. The ...

Representatives of Cambodia’s booming tourism industry yesterday called on the Asian Development Bank to provide funding for workforce training in the sector. During the meeting at the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, tour operator Ho Vandy, who also co-chairs the Tourism Working Group in the Government-Private Sector Forum, said representatives ...

The governemnt yesterday denied a recent news report that discussions were under way to have Cambodian domestic workers sent to Singapore. An Bunhak, chairman of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA), said he did not know of any immediate plans to send maids to ...

A casino in Poipet that pays wages only in Thai baht is yet to fulfil its promise to improve conditions for its 500 workers, a union representative said yesterday. Workers are still working 12­-hour days – often without a break – at the Tropicana Casino, one ...

The Ministry of Labour has played down reports it is close to sending domestic workers to Singapore, a country that has only recently granted foreign maids a weekly day off. The two countries’ governments had been in talks with Singapore’s Association of Employment Agencies about placing ...

In a year in which more than a thousand Cambodian garment factory workers have fainted on the job, activists across Europe are demonstrating for higher wages and better working conditions in the Kingdom’s factories. Throughout the past week, demonstrators mimicked faintings by collapsing on the floors ...