News

The Ministry of Labour has announced that factory managers must allow employees three days off for Khmer New Year, even as some union leaders encourage workers to extend that time. In a letter to factory owners dated March 25, Labour Minister Ith Sam Heng reminds owners ...

Workplace deaths shot up more than 60 per cent last year when compared with 2012, while injuries and payouts to those injured also saw dramatic increases, according to data released yesterday by the National Social Security Fund (NSSF). Speaking during a conference at the Ministry of ...

Amid a continually rising rate of industrial accidents and deaths, the Ministry of Labour introduced a campaign focused on identifying workplace hazards before tragedy strikes. Since the ministry began keeping track of 960 Cambodian factories in 2009, workplace accidents have risen by nearly 375 per cent, ...

Hundreds of trucks hauling sugarcane queue up along the dusty roads that cut a path through a plantation in Kampong Speu province. Their destination: Cambodia’s most advanced sugar refinery. Its owners say the landmark project, run by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company and its president, ruling ...

Mass faintings in Cambodia’s garment factories do not occur as a result of long hours and arduous working conditions, but from workers’ failure to care for their own health, according to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) director. During an annual meeting, which mainly focused on ...

The government has no intention of withdrawing its signature from the International Labour Organization’s freedom of association convention, despite calls for it to reconsider its position, a Ministry of Labour spokesman said yesterday. “I don’t think we will withdraw. The prime minister [Hun Sen] has already ...

The leaders of 18 unions and union confederations this week will invite ruling and opposition party members to take part in a public forum where labour relations issues will be discussed. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU), yesterday said the letters have ...

Cambodian labourers may soon be recruited to construction sites in the United Arab Emirates, where conditions are described as “tragic” by human rights groups. The Lebanon-based company that would hire the workers under the prospective scheme, Agostine & Raphael Group, is run by Middle Eastern tycoon ...

The number of workers fainting in garment and footwear factories halved in 2013, a National Social Security Fund (NSSF) report released last week claims – a decline the Ministry of Labour puts down to increased education. The NSSF, which is part of the ministry, recorded 823 ...

Despite Cambodia’s labour law forbidding employers from taking action against workers for engaging in union activity, more than 100 labour union representatives have been fired from at least 12 factories this month for encouraging workers to strike for a $160 monthly minimum wage. The firings came ...

An interministerial committee led by Deputy Prime Minister Keat Chhon will meet next month to discuss the recent minimum wage increase and subsequent fallout. Ministry of Labour spokesman Heng Sour yesterday told the Post that Prime Minister Hun Sen assigned Chhon to lead the meeting ...

Leaders of unions that declared a nationwide garment worker strike said the work stoppage and protests, which they temporarily suspended, will resume unless government officials renegotiate the industry’s minimum wage. The announcement was their first since authorities cracked down on strike demonstrations on January 2 and ...

About 30,000 garment workers from 40 factories in Svay Rieng province yesterday were told to return to their jobs after being sent home Monday amid fears a strike over the minimum wage would turn violent. Has Bunthy, a provincial department director at the Ministry of Labour, ...

A garment factory’s alleged efforts to wipe workers’ contract histories clean could be a “test case” for how much international buyers tolerate factories negotiating outside of legal requirements, a labour-rights advocate has said. After effectively being bought out of their contracts, about 300 employees of USA ...

In one corner of the cavernous training centre, a woman patiently strips the baby blue sheets off a queen-size bed, removing the flower-patterned pillowcases and folding them neatly to one side. Under the watchful eye of an instructor, she then remakes the bed, carefully fluffing the ...

A new set of prakases tacked onto a law that regulates overseas employment recruitment agencies is a “step in the right direction” towards protecting some of Cambodia’s most vulnerable citizens from scams and abuse, local and international NGOs said yesterday. But some remain unconvinced that the ...

A joint committee designed to bring about wage increases in the garment sector will meet for the first time on Friday, a Ministry of Social Affairs letter obtained yesterday states. Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union, said he believed ...

Alleged ringleaders of an overseas employment scam the Ministry of Labour says bilked thousands of clients out of money were charged with fraud in Phnom Penh on Friday. Oun Sarath, 30, and Kim Sophat, 29, the director and marketing manager, respectively, of recruiting firm You Can ...

Nearly 50 workers, including a woman who is seven months pregnant, fainted at a clothing factory in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district yesterday due to poor ventilation, union officials and labour-rights groups said. The 47 employees at Wanshen Clothing (Cambodia) Co collapsed at about 3pm, ...

After nearly 50 garment workers were killed last year while travelling to or from their respective factories, the Ministry of Labour has urged truck drivers who cram dozens into the back of vehicles each day to take more care on the roads. In an information session ...

An 18-year-old man became the third construction worker in three days to be killed on the job after part of a building collapsed on him and three co-workers – including two 15-year-olds – on Monday, police said. Yu Bunrong, from Kampong Cham province’s Koh Sotin district, ...

The company that paid the funeral costs of two construction workers killed when a fence collapsed on them on Saturday distanced itself yesterday from the accident, saying it doesn’t own the building site. The claim came as Meanchey District Governor Kouch Chamroeun vowed to take action ...

Candidates for a government program that sends Cambodians to work in South Korea can file paperwork closer to home this year, as applications will now be distributed in 13 provinces. Applications will be available until Friday in provincial labour offices in Battambang, Kampong Cham, Kampong ...

Approximately 40 workers fainted at the TMI garment factory in Svay Rieng yesterday, police and workers said. Workers at the factory began feeling sick and fainting when a heavy air of glue fumes wafted into the factory as workers returned from lunch, So Navy, 23, a ...