Workers ditch factories for fields
At some point during the planting season this year, Pheap Srey Ngoun will leave her garment factory floor for a rice paddy in Cambodia’s Prey Veng province. Like many fellow garment workers she will leave her position, with permission from the factory, to lend a hand to her parents in the field. Splitting time among rural and urban life is commonplace in cultures such as Cambodia’s, which straddles a fine line between tradition and modernity. But not all employees at garment factories – the Kingdom’s number one earner of foreign exchange – ask for leave. During the planting season that runs from May to August, and the harvest in November and December, factories see up to 20 per cent of the workforce head home unannounced to sow or reap the grain. …
