"Workers’ welfare progresses", 6 December 2018

An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report... shows that Cambodia continues to make steady progress in the welfare of garment and factory workers, but significant concerns remain over health and safety issues.

The ILO’s Better Factories Cambodia Programme (BFC) assessed the working conditions in 464 factories in the Kingdom between May 1, last year, and June 30, this year.

A notable area of improvement was in child labour, with the report showing that the number of underage workers “reduced sharply” from 74 cases between May 2013 and April 2014 to 10 cases in the current reporting period. It said underage workers often used falsified identification documents to get jobs.

Factories accused of having child workers have also complained that they were victims as they were given falsified documents to begin with...

Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (Central) programme coordinator Khun Tharo said while the reduction was a positive step, he suspects there may be many more cases that remained unreported, with child labour remaining prevalent across industries in Cambodia...