News

A domestic migrant worker who returned to Cambodia on Saturday yesterday recounted two years of alleged physical abuse by her employer in Malaysia while she fulfilled a contract for a recruitment firm based in the capital. At a press conference held by Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker ...

The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA) plans to propose a set of measures to the government that would put the association in charge of improving protection for Cambodian maids working in Malaysia. A human rights worker, however, disapproved of the plan because it only involved ...

In what is becoming an all too familiar tale, another mother of a domestic worker who was sent to Malaysia has filed a complaint alleging her daughter is being exploited. Chea Si Yan said yesterday she wanted her daughter and goddaughter to come home because they ...

The government was urged yesterday not to start sending domestic helpers to Malaysia again until it had a Memorandum of Understand with Kuala Lumpur guaranteeing protection of Cambodian migrant workers there. Ya Navuth, executive director of Coordination of Action Research on Aids and Mobility, also said ...

An 18-year-old Battambang woman who was working as a maid in Malaysia has become the latest in a string of domestic workers to die there this year, and the second to die in less than a month, SRP lawmaker Mu Sochua and the woman’s family ...

The father of an 18-year-old girl who he said had been missing in Malaysia for more than a year, has filed a complaint with the rights group Adhoc against the labour firm that sent her there. Minh Ngi, 46, from Preah Vihear province, said yesterday the ...

Another family has been asked to come and retrieve the remains of their dead daughter from a recruitment firm after she passed away in Malaysia, and they claim the agency that sent her threatened not to return her ashes if the family pursued legal action. The ...

A director and a former director of recruitment company Champa Manpower Group were sentenced in absentia to seven years’ jail yesterday for detaining three female workers in Phnom Penh last year. Chaing Sinath, presiding judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, ordered that company director Sos ...

Malaysia wants to reach bilateral agreements with Cambodia and other labor-sending countries that would allow foreign maids to keep their passports, limit their work-day to eight hours and give them one day off per week, Malaysian news media reported yesterday. Malaysian Human Resources Minister Datuk Subramaniam ...

As reports of the death of yet another Cambodian maid in Malaysia surfaced, opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua said yesterday that a bilateral agreement between Cambodian and Malaysia was necessary if the two countries were serious about protecting the rights of Cambodian domestic workers living in ...

A Malaysian parliamentarian has lashed out at his own government and police for their “callous approach” in failing to take proper action in response to the deaths of nine Cambodian domestic workers in their country this year, Charles Santiago, a member of the opposition Democratic Action ...

The Cambodian embassy in Malaysia has reported that nine migrant domestic workers have died there this year, including one on Sunday, a rights activist and an opposition parliamentarian visiting Kuala Lumpur said yesterday. After a press conference held by the Malaysian rights group Tenaganita, Moeun Tola, ...

The Cambodian Embassy in Malaysia returned abused Cambodian maids, including women who were raped by their employers, to work at maid recruitment agencies in that country, a new report by Human Rights Watch claims. The New York-based rights group also said Cambodian police colluded with labor ...

More than two weeks after a ban on sending maids to Malaysia began, work on a bilateral agreement that would protect Cambodian maids working in Malaysia has not begun, officials said yesterday. Ho Vuthy, deputy director general at the Ministry of Labor’s department of labor, said ...

Two new claims of abuse of Cambodian maids employed in Malaysia have emerged since Friday, including one case of a woman who returned home with severe mental trauma following alleged mistreatment by her Malaysian employer, the victims’ families said. Iy Thar, a villager from Kompong Thom ...

Amid mounting concerns over labor recruitment agencies’ treatment of migrant workers, new links were discovered yesterday between agencies and the officials that regulate them, as a daughter of a senior Labor Ministry official was found to be running a major recruitment firm. Nhem Chakrya, deputy director ...

Overseas labor recruitment agencies that send maids to Malaysia are planning to lay off about 1,000 staff members as they prepare to close down many pre-departure training centers following a growing scandal around abuses and criminal activity during the recruitment, training and sending of maids. An ...

Police said they freed one recruit from a Phnom Penh recruitment agency this weekend and were seeking to prosecute its director, adding that they were doing the same for the director of the SKMM recruitment agency, where 78 recruits were freed last week. The court ...

Reactions in Malaysian media to Cambodia’s Oct 15 ban on sending maids to Malaysia contain a mix of shame, indignation and a need to stress that most employers in Malaysia do not mistreat foreign domestic workers. “There are very few bad apples among us,” said an ...

The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies announced a temporary ban on the sending of all domestic workers to Malaysia amidst another underage trainee scandal – this one involving a firm owned by the wife of a senior member of Cambodia’s international police department. On Monday, the ...

The Minister of Labor yesterday defended his ministry’s much-criticized interpretation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ban on sending maids to Malaysia, after it allowed about 3,000 young women to still be sent abroad despite the serious risk of abuse and exploitation. Minister of Labor Vong Sauth ...

Depending on who you believe, the South China Sea could be the next Persian Gulf due to its untapped oil and gas deposits. It’s also a key shipping lane that the US Navy has guarded for decades. That’s why so many countries are sparring over remote ...

Despite Prime Minister Hun Sen’s indefinite ban on sending Cambodian maids to Malaysia, two recruitment agencies continued to send maids there yesterday, according to rights group Licadho Recruitment agency Top Manpower put seven recruits on Air Asia flight AK 273 to Kuala Lumpur yesterday morning, while ...

PHNOM PENH: Malaysia expects to minimise its dependence on imports of animal feed and lessen the impact of the global food crisis by 2020 under the reciprocal investment policy, Agriculture and Agro-based Minister Datuk Seri Noh Omar said. One such initiative under the policy was the ...