By David Boyle
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Phnom Penh Post
A conclusive settlement has been reached in the long-running dispute
between a Thai seafood factory and its Cambodian employees, Cambodian
ambassador to Thailand You Ay said yesterday.
Rights groups and
workers at the Phatthana Seafood factory in Thailand’s Songkhla
province, which employs 1,050 Cambodians, have accused the company of a
raft of abuses.
After workers won concessions from the factory
on wages, possession of passports and a food allowance, they continued
protesting for free housing, which they argued was promised by Cambodian
labour firm CDM Trading Manpower in the contracts to send them abroad.
You
Ay said she had helped strike an agreement that ensured the workers
received free housing, required CDM Trading Manpower to visit the
factory every month and address their access to healthcare.
“I
do hope that everything is better now, and I promise to you that I will
follow up everything that the factory and CDM agreed with workers,” she
said.
But for a group of workers she described as semi-legal, the
high price of obtaining passports and the multiple steps towards
becoming legal workers remained a problem.
“How to do this one because the [semi-legal] workers do not have money to pay from the beginning?” she said.
Joel
Preston, a consultant at Cambodian Legal Education Center, said about
100 of these workers had been trafficked by different groups to the
factory.
“Our priority is that everyone is legitimate and they’re legally entitled to be there,” he said.
Preston said if the agreement the ambassador had negotiated was respected, it was finally a step in the right direction.
“If
they’ve been given what they were promised by CDM, workers should be
content to stay and make the best out of a bad situation,” he said.
So
Saobol, a CDM Trading Manpower representative responsible for its
Phatthana Seafood workers, said the ambassador had settled the issue.
Phatthana Seafood’s parent company, PTN, which supplies retail giant Walmart, has repeatedly failed to respond to the Post.
Workers also could not be reached yesterday.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Boyle at david.boyle@phnompenhpost.com
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