CHAMPASAK PROVINCE, Laos – Beneath a small wooden house in southern Laos, sits a makeshift laboratory a short walk from the bank of the Mekong River.
Small plastic containers were stacked on a table during a recent visit, each individually labeled with the name of the species inside: monotreta fangi, puntius brevis, pangasius.
The government is considering raising the minimum wage for the country’s garment workers every year for the next five years, Labor Minister Ith Sam Heng said after a meeting Wednesday with manufacturers and unions on increasing the current monthly salary of $80.
Mr. Sam Heng presided over a meeting with the four technical working groups tasked with determining a new minimum wage for the 350,000-plus workers employed in the $4 billion garment industry. The wage is set to be raised in January, but no amount has yet been specified.
The minimum wage for garment factory workers can only be raised if international clothing brands sourcing from Cambodia pay more for their products, a Ministry of Labor official said Tuesday.
Khieu Savuth, chief of the Ministry of Labor’s labor conflict commission, laid down the challenge a day after Swedish retail giant H&M announced a push for countries they source from to instate a fair living wage by 2018.
The current government-mandated minimum wage of $80 a month for garment factory workers will be increased in January 2014, though the amount it will be raised by has not been determined, a Labor Ministry official said Monday.
Prak Chanthoeun, director-general of the Labor Ministry’s labor conflict committee, said Monday that there will be a meeting on Wednesday between the government, factory owners, and unions to discuss the imminent wage increase.
U.S. denim giant Levi Strauss continued to deny this week that its products are linked to the strife-torn SL Garment Factory in Phnom Penh, despite new photographs showing Levi’s trademark jeans stacked on benches at the plant in Meanchey district.
The Singaporean-owned factory, which also produces clothing for U.S. brand Gap and Swedish retail giant H&M, has seen ongoing protests since early August. Last week, one woman was shot dead by police gunfire and several people injured during clashes between authorities and SL protesters.
At the end of 1978, two Americans were captured by the Khmer Rouge while sailing in waters off the coast of Sihanoukville.
Michael Deeds and Chris Delance were captured, imprisoned, interrogated and tortured at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison camp in Phnom Penh—where an estimated 15,000 men, women and children were sent to their deaths during Pol Pot’s regime.
CHAMPASAK PROVINCE, Laos – For three days this week, the Lao government and the Malaysian company behind the 240-MW Don Sahong dam project pulled out all the stops to sell the project to a group of skeptical officials from neighboring Cambodia and Vietnam.
The visitors were treated to lavish meals at a five-star hotel in Pakse, replete with shark-fin soup and roasted duck. Monday night’s agenda featured a dinner with free-flowing Beerlao and whiskey for guests, who were entertained by women performing traditional Lao dances.
CPP lawmaker Chheang Vun on Wednesday lauded the economic and social benefits of the widespread clearing of Cambodia’s forests for development projects.
Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly after a meeting with the Vietnamese Ambassador Ngo Anh Dzung, Mr. Vun, who is also the spokesman for the National Assembly, said the protection of forestland is important, but not more important than economic development.
Cambodia is one of the top 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change because the majority of its population is engaged in agriculture and there is a lack of infrastructure to combat floods and other effects, the 3rd National Forum on Climate Change was told Tuesday.
About 80 percent of Cambodians living in rural areas will be affected if the government does not factor climate change’s effects into their national development plans, as the majority of those people work in the agriculture sector, said Claire Van der Vaeren, U.N. resident coordinator in Cambodia.
The call for a higher minimum wage in Cambodia’s garment industry by Swedish clothing giant H&M, which posted a 2012 profit margin of more than $3.4 billion, should begin with the brand itself as it has the power and means to raise workers’ wages, industry members said Monday.
H&M, the world’s second-largest clothing retailer by sales, has been buying from suppliers in Cambodia since 1998 and is one of the largest buyers in the country’s most profitable sector—which exported more than $4 billion worth of garments in 2012.
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