Workers of Two Factories Receive Compensation after more than one year ago

 Camboja, Feb. 13, 2021

In the early morning cool, 51-year-old Sao Na stood outside the Kandal Provincial Hall ground on Friday wearing a helmet, armed with rice, sweetcakes and one last slither of hope she would finally receive a long-promised payout.

After more than ten years of service, the Dignity Knitter factory stopped paying her in December 2019, then suspended operations, and then shut down without notice – leaving her and about 1,000 co-workers there and at the nearby ECO Base factory jobless and owed thousands of dollars each.

After a year of broken promises, the provincial court this month sold more than $1.1 million worth of equipment seized from the shuttered factories, which will be split between more than 1,000 workers, who have stood vigil at the factories around the clock for months and staved off multiple attempts by management to take back their goods. 

“It’s not much but we have no choice,” Na said, of the $1,300 she was set to receive. “I feel nothing. I’ve waited too long.” 

About 50 workers were waiting outside the court by 7am, each of them with a story of hardship brought on by losing their jobs in the middle of a pandemic – and many of them unable to move on without having resolved the dispute.

Na had done a few shifts guarding the factory but then went to work on a construction site alongside her husband. But after a few months earning $7.50 a day labouring, she was laid off, unable to keep up, and became the on-site cook.

“I had no choice but to go to a construction site. Factories won’t hire me because I am too old,” she said.

“Garment work is easier than construction work because factory work is regular,” she added, explaining how her job ironing at the factory came with a guaranteed $200 every month, compared to $7.50 per day labouring on a worksite.

In full: https://cambojanews.com/workers-of-two-factories-receive-compensation-after-more-than-one-year-ago/

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