Over 45,000 Garment Jobs Lost in Cambodia Last Year

2010-02-17
Xinhua

At least 106 garment and shoe factories were closed last year, mostly because of a slump in Cambodia's key export industry, forcing more than 45,000 workers out of employment, local media reported on Wednesday, citing figures from the Ministry of Labour.

Oum Mean, secretary of state at the ministry, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying that 66 additional factories had suspended operations over the same period, temporarily affecting an additional 38,124 workers.

"At the same time, we also saw 48 new established factories that employed 16,886 workers," he said, adding that the government trained 40,000 unemployed garment workers in agriculture up to October.

The Ministry of Labour said that at the end of September last year, 130 garment factories closed or suspended operations in Cambodia in the first three quarters, meaning an additional 42 factories had shut down from October to the end of December.

Just over 30,000 garment workers were made redundant last year up to the end of September. Evidence so far has suggested that openings and closures were about the same, according to Oum Mean.

However, a representative of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) said that the sector is far from recovery. GMAC Secretary General Ken Loo pointed out that shipments were still down after dismal figures for the last quarter of 2008.

Cambodia's garment sector is regarded as the first largest earning income for the country's revenue.

Global downturn threatens Cambodian garment success

March 28, 2009
By EK MADRA

Phnom Penh, March 28 (Reuters) - Mon Moeun, one of thousands of Cambodians pulled out of poverty by a job in the garment trade since foreign investors arrived in the 1990s, may be back rearing pigs soon after a collapse in demand from Western countries.

Many garment factories in Cambodia are closing as shoppers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere cut back on clothing purchases due to the global financial crisis.

Garments are Cambodia’s biggest export earner and its economy may shrink this year due to the drop in demand.

Moeun and his wife have suffered a double blow. They used to earn $80 a month each as garment workers, sending half of it back to support their 8-year-old son living with Moeun’s parents in the southern province of Takeo.

Then, three months ago, their factories shut without notice.

"We see hard times ahead when we get back to the countryside, raising pigs and planting vegetables to make a living," said Moeun, 39, chatting with friends under a tree near a shuttered factory on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh.

More than 1,000 workers were owed pay when South Korean-owned Da Joo (Cambodia) Ltd. closed. It has become an all too familiar story.

At its peak, Cambodia’s garment sector boasted almost 300 factories employing 340,000 workers, many of them women from the countryside.

Foreign companies started to move into the impoverished Southeast Asian country after UN-sponsored elections in 1993, fuelling an economic revival after 30 years of civil war and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge ‘’killing fields’’ in the 1970s.

The monitoring of work conditions by the International Labour Organisation helped lure brands such as Adidas, Nike and Gap, keen to avoid bad publicity from sweatshops. Cambodia’s membership of the World Trade Organisation from 2004 provided another boost.

Factories sprang up where once there were green rice fields around the capital and garments became Cambodia’s biggest export earner. They brought in $2.78 billion in 2008, but that may drop about 30 percent this year, said Kaing Monika, spokesman of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC).

Exports of garments to the US market dropped nearly 40 percent in January compared with a year earlier. Some 70 percent of the clothes go to the United States, 25 percent to Europe and the rest mainly to South Korea and Japan.

PM tells unemployed workers of Cambodian to return to agriculture [-Will it help when crop price drops and land-grabbing happening everywhere?]

PHNOM PENH, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Unemployed factory workers can return to agriculture to guarantee better crops supply for the kingdom, national media on Tuesday quoted Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as telling a recent meeting.

Closure of factories has led to mass unemployment, but workers can still find their livelihood in the rural areas as Cambodia is a country rooted in agriculture, Chinese-language newspaper the Sinchew Daily quoted him as saying.

"Unemployment hasn't caused very big crisis for our country," because people still have large fields to plant crops and fruit trees, he said.

If more people return to villages for plantation, Cambodia can have better crops supply, he said.

Meanwhile, Cambodia is also expecting EU, U.S., China, Japan and South Korea to revitalize their economies as soon as possible, thus becoming capable to help the kingdom develop itself, he added.

According to local reports, at least 80 garment factories have been closed in Cambodia since the global financial crisis occurred at the end of last year.

Some 19,000 people have lost their jobs in the garment sector so far and more are expected later this year, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in February.

Garment is the kingdom's foremost pillar industry. Meanwhile, Cambodia is also a major rice exporter in the region beside the Mekong River.