Labor
PM warns against illegal migration brokers at border
Prime Minister Hun Sen has urged Cambodian people to work within the country and avoid being deceived by brokers who illegally send them to Thailand for work amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Please don’t be deceived by a broker. We have to work in our country. Some ...
Ry Sochan
Cambodia Hikes Minimum Wage by US $2 as Workers Grapple With Inflation in Coronavirus Economy
Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor on Thursday announced a new minimum wage of U.S. $192 per month for 2021, an increase of only U.S. $2 from this year, drawing criticism from workers struggling with inflation amid an economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. “Beginning on Jan. 1, 2021, garment ...
RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Govt compensating private sector workers laid off during pandemic
Employees who are members of their business’s social insurance scheme are eligible to receive financial assistance for temporary unemployment or loss of workdays during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, only members of business-related social insurance schemes will be able to receive compensation from the National Social Security ...
Phetphoxay Sengpaseuth
A crisis for workers
Venue closure, curfew and state policies enforced to contain the spread of Covid-19 are affecting the labour force severely. Workers experience the impact in different magnitudes, with some getting less pay and seeing their working hours reduced. Others manage to work from home. Some lose ...
MELALIN MAHAVONGTRAKUL
Trafficking warning in Asia as coronavirus pummels economies
Before lockdowns, curfews, and safe distancing, Thodsapone Kitta would go door to door, visiting low-income families in Thailand’s northern Nan province, a poor, mountainous region home to hill tribes and rural farmers where people are vulnerable to trafficking. For Thodsapone, a member of The Freedom Story, ...
Caleb Quinley
Thailand: Migrants Could Benefit from Moves to Ease COVID-19 Restrictions
Migrant workers in Thailand who could not return to their home countries because of the COVID-19 lockdown have lost jobs and suffered financial hardship during the pandemic, but could soon see their outlook improve as the country starts to reopen. Thailand has long been a regional ...
Nontarat Phaicharoen
Royal water project to reinvigorate farming
Pid Thong Lang Phra, a foundation dedicated to promoting the sufficiency economy vision of King Bhumibol Adulyadej The Great, has launched water-development schemes to address the scourge of mass unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Karan Supakitvilekakarn, director-general of the Royal Initiative Discovery Institute under Pid ...
CHATRUDEE THEPARAT & PENCHAN CHAROENSUTHIPAN
Govt to hire jobless to offer health advice
The government may employ public health volunteers to advise on how to prevent disease transmission as certain business activities reopen from the lockdown today. Speaking at the Ministry of Public Health, Sathit Pitutecha, the ministry’s deputy minister, said the government is concerned about the large number ...
APINYA WIPATAYOTIN
Five million workers, 84.8% of companies affected by COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam: GSO
The General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam said on Friday an estimated five million workers and nearly 85 percent of companies in the country were negatively affected by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. Turbulence was observed in the Vietnamese labor market in Q1 2020 and ...
Local Workers on Lao-China Railway Say They Have Gone Without Pay For Months
Up to 30 Lao workers building a nearly completed railway project that will connect landlocked Laos with China say that they have not been paid in three to four months, because their Chinese employers left the area and went home early this year amid the ...
Reported by RFA’s Lao Service, Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin