Poipet: Birth of the first union

07-09-2007
By Nhim Sophal
Cambodge Soir
Translated from French by Luc Sâr

From now on, workers at the Poipet border post have their union. Pov Srey Touch, a beer girl, was elected this Tuesday 04 September as the IDIEA (Independent Democracy of Informal Economic Association) representative. The election was organized in a restaurant due to a lack of appropriate venue. About 100 people came to vote, most of them are poor workers from Poipet, along with representatives of the local authorities. “I will fight against all form of threats, and I will defend the members of the association, and the workers from Poipet,” Pov Srey Touch declared. “We have decided to form a representative office here in order to defend the rights of the workers: porters, mototaxis, beer girls, etc…, who are the daily target of the cops and the custom officials,” Vorn Pov, the president of this association, said. He indicated that his organization now counts 1,360 members in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Poipet. Vorn Pov hopes to expand the establishment of IDIEA. He is thinking in particular about Bavet, a city located near the Vietnamese border, in which commercial and industrial development is in full swing, along with the increasing number of workers who are “unknowledgeable about law and who have no recourse in abuse cases, even if they are flagrant abuses.”