[PHNOM PENH POST]
A union leader has raised concerns that more than 100,000 garment
workers under the age of 18 are being paid below the industry’s minimum
wage, with many under-15s suspected of being forced to work full-time
hours and overtime illegally.
Chea Mony, president of the Free
Trade Union of Cambodian Workers, said yesterday that the union had
carried out a month-long survey of 370,000 garment workers that revealed
about 30 percent of them were under 18 and forced to work in conditions
that violated Cambodia’s labour law.
“At first, they did not
want to tell us the truth about their age because they were afraid of
losing their jobs, but when we explained and convinced them [it was
safe], then they told us that they were not old enough to work [in those
conditions] yet,” he said.
An unofficial translation of the
Cambodian labour law stipulates that children aged between 12 and 15
years of age can engage in light work provided it is not hazardous to
their health and they have gained parental consent.
The minimum
wage for garment workers in Cambodia is US$61 per month, but Chea Mony
said some factories had deliberately employed young workers because it
was easy to pay them below that benchmark without resistance.
The
surveyed employees, many of whom were under the legal full-time working
age of 15, told researchers they had been forced to falsify their
personal biographies to increase their ages, he said.
He
identified offending factories as O’Rieng Ov Textile Industry factory in
Kampong Cham province, Svay Antor factory in Prey Veng province and
numerous unnamed factories in the provinces of Kandal, Kampong Speu and
the capital, Phnom Penh. Representatives of those factories, could not
be reached yesterday.
Phouk Chandy, a worker who was fired last
month after she told local press outlets that the O’Rieng Ov textile
factory employed about 50 underage workers in illegal conditions, said
yesterday children were being forced to work to the point where they
became dizzy and started vomiting.
“Those children have to work
the same hours and the same jobs as the older people, they have to work
eight hours a day and two more hours for overtime,” she said. Cheng
Heang, provincial director of the Kampong Cham Labour Department, said
he had personally inspected the O’Rieng Ov Textile Industry factory and
found no evidence of abuse.
“I went to inspect and there were some young people who looked small, but they were over 18 years old,” he said.
Om
Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of Labour, denied widespread
abuses of the labour law’s provisions on minimum age and said strict
enforcement had resulted in a near total elimination of illegal young
workers.
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