Labour Ministry releases mass fainting figures

Figures released by the Ministry of Labor on Friday showed that 1,578 garment factory workers have fainted in workplace incidents since the beginning of this year. Pok Vanthat, deputy director of the Labor Ministry’s Medical Unit and chief of its research committee, said that his committee had inspected factory sanitation and safety, chemicals in the workplace, and factory layout in their examination of the fainting phenomena. Eight factories in total had fainting incidents in the first nine months of this year: seven in Phnom Penh and one in Kampong Chhnang province, according to the ministry. “The main causes that make workers faint are insecticides, smoke, high temperatures, stress and manual labor of lifting and storing,” Mr Vanthat said. The ministry outlines short-term emergency measures and long-term strategic measures to address and alleviate the problem… The ministry has created an inter-ministerial task force in association with the International Labor Organization’s Better Factories program to monitor incidents…