The Phnom Penh Post
Wednesday, 06 June 2012
Stuart Alan Becker
A new study has determined that cost and space are the biggest
constraints to setting up canteens in Cambodia’s garment factories.
The
findings were presented on Monday night at a cocktail party attended by
Cambodia’s former ambassador to the US, Roland Eng, the Swedish
Ambassador Anne Höglund,
Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia Chairman Van Sou Ieng, Rami Sharaf of RMA Asia and many others.
Sandra D’Amico of
HR Inc,
who’s company BD link carried out the study, gave the presentation and
spoke afterwards to explain the significance of the findings.
“Garment
factory owners are very concerned about the nutrition and health of
their workers. However they do not feel they should carry the burden of
the cost,” D’Amico said. “However, factories lack information and
understanding around professional food service providers like Hagar.”
The study was undertaken on behalf of Hagar and financed by
Better Work Cambodia, the
International Labor Organization (ILO) and D’Amico’s company, HR Inc.
The study covered 35,000 garment factory workers during a three month period this year.
“Nutrition
impacts productivity, that’s a fact,” D’Amico said. “Better health,
concentration, learning, stamina and strength: all of that is needed to
perform.”
She said many factory workers now got their meals from
food service stalls outside factory gates where the food was not fresh
and hygienic.
“From the perspective of improving health generally for workers, something needs to be done to improve the quality of services.”
D’Amico
said one innovative option that was explored by the study was a joint
canteen facility, where government, employers, unions and factories
would all come together to create facilities and subsidise meals for the
workers.
“Such a facility needs to be explored better as to feasibility and willingness to participate,” she said.
D’Amico thinks there’s a misperception in general about how much factory workers genuinely earn.
She
said there’s also a problem that many factory workers send more money
than they should to their family members in the provinces, often at the
expense of their own health.
“I think public information from
radio, TV, newspapers that this target group reads needs to give people
the information they need to look after themselves effectively. They
need to know if they eat bad food what that is going to mean for them in
the long run.”
D’Amico said she hoped to see more innovation
with snacks so that workers could get vitamins and iron they might not
otherwise get.
“The issue of nutrition is serious because it has
long-term consequences and the impact is huge from a social security
perspective. The whole topic is unbelievably important. I think
everybody has a responsibility, government, unions, civil society, the
public sector, they have an obligation to talk about these issues, and
to promote healthy eating.”
D’Amico said the survey shows that it
is necessary to maintain a cost base given that providing canteen
services in factories is a massive up-front investment.
“If you
increase cost base significantly, it increases cost to buyers, and we
are in a very volatile, fragile environment where people don’t
understand what the impact is going to be on Cambodia. Factories have
genuine and real concerns about maintaining jobs and sustainability of
the operations they have,” she said.
D’Amico said she hopes more studies would be done on nutrition and health in the garment sector.
“What
we do know from the government health survey is that one in 15 women is
too thin,” she said. “We can really benefit from more information on
nutrition health on productivity issues.”
The survey found that
factory managers believe that nutrition and productivity are linked and
feel that employers should not carry the burden of nutrition alone.
Seventy-five
per cent of factories provide basic medical care for workers and 33 per
cent of factories were providing private medical insurance to workers.
“Most
factories do not have canteens and factory managers feel they should be
involved in challenges related to nutrition and healthcare, so there is
a great need for training linked to productivity in the sector because
managers need to understand the issues around nutrition and health.”
The survey found that most factory workers eat outside the factory gate.
Sixty
per cent of factories believed that workers spent from 1,000 to 2,000
riels for every meal, with breakfast and lunch being the cheapest and
dinner the most expensive.
“There should be cleaner facilities or public sector interventions, to increase cleanliness and hygiene,” she said.
D’Amico
said 56 per cent of factories said they would be interested to provide
one meal, but they needed to be shown a positive change in productivity.
“We
asked factory managers if they were interested in joint canteen
facilities, and servicing a bigger number of workers. In summary, we can
say that factory managers are very concerned about health and nutrition
issue. The feasibility of canteens is less given concerns of space, and
there is a real need for factories to have information on cost and
productivity if they were to be interested in providing meals,” D’Amico
said.
“If government unions and employers would come together to
support joint facilities, they could do cost sharing of infrastructure
and a subsidy of the meals is worth further investigation,” she said.
“We
also need to get more information to factory managers and we need
public sector intervention in improving food services outside the
factory gates.”
