News

The government has approved Qatar as a destination for the growing number of Cambodian labourers seeking employment overseas. Workers will not be recruited for housekeeping services, however, private sector officials said. The abuse of maids in Malaysia – many of whom were reportedly under-aged – has ...

Human rights groups are warning that Cambodia’s new Prison Law will create financial incentives for violations of human rights within the Kingdom’s prisons and tarnish the image of the country’s most lucrative export industry: footwear and garments. They point to Article 71 of the new law, ...

Negotiations mediated by provincial labour officials yesterday between management of the M&V International Manufacturing garment factory in Kampong Chhnang and union representatives were successful, representatives from both sides said. The company accepted 12 demands from workers and both sides agreed to forward four unresolved issues to ...

Three false alarms at a garment factory triggered another mass fainting incident yesterday morning, sending 59 female staff, including one security guard, to hospitals and clinics, according to a statement from the Ministry of Labour. The first alarm went off  about 7:40am in a sewing section, ...

The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia has for the first time agreed to open an inquiry into the death of a Cambodian maid, opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua said yesterday, calling the investigation “a positive sign.” Ms Sochua said that while she had in the past sent ...

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 ...

More than 100 workers from Cambo Handsome One garment factory gathered outside the home of Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday and Saturday, after urging him on Thursday to intervene in a dispute with the factory’s Korean owners. The move followed an appeal to the Ministry ...

At least 20 Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand have had their passports confiscated by a Thai recruitment agency, while another 10 have gone missing after they fled the same agency fearing they would be trafficked to work on Thai fishing vessels, Human Rights Watch and ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court ordered on Tuesday that workers striking at Cambo Handsome 1 return to work within 48 hours and banned them from striking in front of the garment factory, in the capital’s Dankgor district. Seang Sambath, president of the Federation of Friendship Unions, ...

Female workers were rushed to hospital in a second mass fainting yesterday at Su Tong Fang Ying Kam garment factory in Russey Keo district, unionists said. About 17 female workers became overwhelmed with diesel fumes from their sewing machines and were rushed to Calmette Hospital, where ...

Workers and managers at Cambo Handsome 1 garment factory were continuing discussions last night after a fourth day of protest in which union leaders said more than 20 employees were injured in a confrontation with police. The workers are protesting against the suspension of three union ...

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 ...

Police detained two unionists and broke up a protest in Siem Reap province yesterday where workers demanded the owners of the Angkor Village Hotel and Resort respect a court decision ordering them to reinstate 67 workers. On October 26, Siem Reap Municipal Court ruled that the ...

About 400,000 garment and footwear makers will get a US$5 a month raise starting in January, and the factories that employ them will receive a two-year tax holiday, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday. The $5 raise, from $61 to $66 a month, is intended to ...

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 ...

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 ...

A new draft of the trade-union law included “huge changes” that removed all major controversial aspects of the legislation, including criminal sanctions, a union advocate said yesterday. Dave Welsh, country director for the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, said the Ministry of Labour was to ...

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 ...

A 10 per cent rise in the number of garment and footwear factories this year showed the government’s commitment to solving labour disputes, and that its mechanisms to do this were working, a senior official at the labour ministry said yesterday, while admitting that a ...

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 ...

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, ...