The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Government steps in” plus 9 more

Government officials have ordered SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd to reinstate 19 fired union representatives and activists, seemingly removing the final barrier to resolving the months-long strike that turned deadly last week.

The government has also promised to pay the medical bills of at least three factory workers injured when police opened fire on strikers, killing a bystander, in the capital last Tuesday.

The Ministry of Labour sent SL a letter on Friday, relaying that the Council of Ministers – following approval from Prime Minister Hun Sen – had ordered the factory to rehire the 19 fired members of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers' Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), the union representing a large majority of SL's roughly 6,000-person workforce.

The November 15 order, posted on the Ministry of Labour's website, came days after the ministry and NGOs facilitated a marathon negotiation session between C.CAWDU officials and SL management, which ended when the two sides reached an impasse over the fired workers.

Factory officials were given 15 days from Friday evening's receipt of the letter to comply.

"If the factory does not respect the order, they will be fined in accordance with the Labour Law," said Huon Soeur, deputy director of the Ministry of Labour's disputes department.

While content with the order, C.CAWDU vice-president Kong Athit was not prepared to celebrate yesterday. SL management, he said, have met with union and government officials many times during the three-month strike, but rarely budged on workers' demands. C.CAWDU is not yet clear on whether their members will return to SL after the Water Festival, he added.

It's difficult to predict how management will receive the government order, said Dave Welsh, country manager of labour rights group Solidarity Center/ACILS, who attended the meeting Tuesday.

"That was the major sticking point.… It appeared to be non-negotiable," Welsh said. "It's unclear how the factory is going to react."

SL officials who attended the meeting on Tuesday night were adamant in refusing to reinstate the 19 C.CAWDU union officials.

Chief executive Wong Hon Ming said at the time that the 19 were responsible for large profit losses.

SL's general manager could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers' Association in Cambodia, declined to comment yesterday on the order because he had not yet read it.

Union leaders and SL have yet to sign an official agreement ending the strike. At the Tuesday meeting, SL verbally agreed to pay workers 50 per cent of wages they would have earned during the strike, and that Meas Sotha – who hired armed military police to stand guard inside the factory – would no longer have a presence at the factory.

A National Social Security Fund (NSSF) official confirmed yesterday that the fund will pay the medical bills of three SL Garment workers shot.

NSSF officer Ouk Chan Veasna told the Post that the fund – which compensates injured workers who pay into it – was acting out of pity for the workers, despite the law stating it didn't have to cover injuries sustained during a strike.

"The NSSF's rules are to pay workers who are injured in an accident at work or on the way to and from work," she said. "Our [policy] is not to pay out workers injured when they join rallies."

Chan Veasna said NSSF officials had decided to make an exception, but did not elaborate.

Sok Sokheoun, the wife of Ty Sophanith, 31, who was shot in the back and thigh, said she was pleased with the offer.

"We feel very happy when [Chan Veasna] … told me not to worry about my husband's medical bills, because the NSSF will pay them."

Ork Pau, 43, said that she, too, was relieved she did not have to pay hospital expenses but said she was not sure whether she would be able to return to work because she had lost fingers after being shot in the hand.

Both remain in Phnom Penh's Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital along with others who were shot, including 23-year-old Seng Sith, who said his bills were also being covered.

Meanwhile, opposition leaderships yesterday issued public calls for a criminal investigation into the shooting.

"We demand the real perpetrators, who shot on people during the protest, be found," said Kem Sokha, vice president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Sokha and other party members also allege that the police department's use of live ammunition violated a prior agreement CPP officials made with the CNRP not to use violence against peaceful demonstrators.

But Loo, of GMAC, dismissed the notion that demonstrators – who threw rocks, burned cars and held police officers hostage – conducted their protest peacefully.

"It was peaceful to begin with, but it didn't end up peaceful," he said.

Two boys, 14 and 17, were arrested at the scene and charged last week with damaging property, insulting public officials, obstructing public officials and aggravation.

They remained in police custody yesterday, according to Yeng Virak, executive director of the Community Legal Education Center – which is providing them pro bono legal representation.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MAY TITTHARA AND SHANE WORRELL

In the midst of rapid urban population growth, Phnom Penh City Hall has applied to create as many as five new districts in the capital, a spokesman said yesterday.

"We plan to split some districts," City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche told the Post, adding that the geographical boundaries of the city itself weren't expanding. "We will do it before the May 2014 [council] elections."

The plan, designed to improve governance and service delivery, had already been submitted in proposal form to government ministries, Dimanche said.

"We want people close to the public services that the authorities provide. If districts are large, they can't serve the needs of the people. So we have to separate districts to better meet their needs," he said.

"I do not know whether there will be three or five, but I have heard it is three."

Sak Setha, secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior, said the government was reviewing City Hall's submission, which would affect Meanchey, Russey Keo, Sen Sok, Por Sen Chey and Chamkarmon districts.

"We're studying the possibility of creating three or four districts," he said.

When asked whether the creation of new districts could result in the ruling Cambodian People's Party strengthening its position before May's election for district and provincial-city council members, Setha said it was possible but unlikely.

In a population survey released by the Ministry of Planning in August – halfway between the 2008 and 2018 censuses – it was revealed that 21.4 per cent of Cambodia's population lives in cities.

That was an increase on the 19.4 per cent recorded in the 2008 census, when Cambodia's overall population was some 10 per cent smaller.

In July, the Post reported that the allocation of National Assembly seats has not changed since before 1998, despite ballooning urbanisation. NGOs said this effectively lowered the worth of a vote in opposition strongholds such as Phnom Penh.

In 1998, the percentage of people living in urban areas was 15.7. The consensus conducted before that – way back in 1962 – found 10.3 per cent of the population living in cities.

Kem Ley, a social researcher and political analyst, said creating new districts was "not the right direction" for the government to take.

Instead, the government needed to be directly addressing issues that urban population growth gave rise to, such as traffic congestion, overcrowding and an unequal spread of infrastructure.

"If we learn from other countries … we should not just create new districts for people to occupy high positions," he said.

Ley said the government should consider subsidising factories or institutions such as universities to relocate to the outskirts of Phnom Penh or, in some cases, provincial areas.

"This is in order to release the people and stop the traffic jams," he said. "In [the future], there will be many more cars, people – if the government does not design a better plan, it will bring more stress to drivers."

San Chey, founder of the NGO Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific (ANSA), said dividing up districts would be an expensive undertaking and it was time for the government at district and commune levels to be transparent about their budgets.

"If district officials are closer to people, but public services are still the same, it's not good to be creating more districts," he said. "We have seen the government order local authorities to post public [spending], but they don't follow orders."

In 2010, more than 20 communes were cut from Kandal province and incorporated into four Phnom Penh districts: Dangkor, Russey Keo, Meanchey and Sen Sok. Dangkor was later split in two, creating Por Sen Chey district.

District authorities said at the time that the creation of a new district was necessary because Dangkor was "too wide to govern". Since the split, the Post has reported on a number of infrastructure issues that have been hampering villagers in Por Sen Chey district.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHANE WORRELL

More than 200 people allegedly scammed out of money through an overseas employment grift held a protest outside You Can Win International School in the capital's Chamkarmon district on Friday, demanding their money back.

The demonstration came two months after Oun Sarath, 30, and Kim Sophat, 29, the director and marketing manager, respectively, of recruiting firm You Can Win Co Ltd were charged in Phnom Penh Municipal Court with defrauding thousands seeking work in South Korea.

"After [Sarath] was arrested, a company representative promised to refund the money, but they still haven't paid," said Chhay Rith, 38, one of the alleged victims in the case. "We lost money and cannot go to Korea. Where is my money?"

Sarath and Sophat charged their clients $100 for forms they said would permit them to legally work in South Korea, Than Thavorak, an attorney representing the Ministry of Labour said in September.

But the forms the company sold were not authorised by the ministry, and gave clients no legal permission to work abroad.

Protesters outside You Can Win on Friday said they also paid $3,000 for courses they took under the assumption the school would help them find work in South Korea.

"I borrowed money to collect the $3,000 for training, because I thought I would get employment in [South] Korea, like the company promised," said Nob Chan Thou, 38. "Now we demand our money back."

Three farm workers were sent to court in Kampong Chhnang on Sunday in connection with the gang rape of a 22-year-old woman on Friday in Teuk Phos district, said Duch Chamroeun, chief of the province's penal police department.

According to the police, the men, Sovar, known as Ngoy, 22; Om Chhin, 33; and Ra Vet, 22, were drinking together when their neighbour walked by. They invited the woman, who police said has a mental disability, to drink with them and then later led her to a plot of land where each man raped her.

"The local villagers heard the victim cry out for help," said Norng Phoeun, deputy police chief of Teuk Phos district. "They took photos of the suspects and sent them to police so the suspects could not deny the crime." Kampong Chhnang court officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Khan Sa, a 78-year-old man in Stung Treng province, died on Saturday after a wild boar attacked him in his rice fields in Thala Borivat district, police said yesterday.

"[Khan Sa] could not climb the tree and, as his injury was serious. He died during the long trip to the hospital," said Iv Leur, district deputy police chief.

After the farmer was attacked on Saturday, locals followed the 95-kilogram boar into the jungle. With its leg caught in a trap, the pig didn't get very far, and was killed by the angry farmers, who plan to roast and eat the animal at Khan Sa's funeral, the commune police chief said.

An investigation in Ratanakkiri province has uncovered thousands of pieces of luxury wood – allegedly felled inside the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary – stockpiled in warehouses of economic land title holders.

Acting on a complaint filed by 124 families on November 13, rights group Adhoc and some 20 villagers found Agrico Co Ltd and Hoang Anh Lumphat – part of a family of companies repeatedly accused of illegal logging – had been harvesting Thnong and Neang Nuon wood within the sanctuary and exporting it by boat, said Adhoc coordinator Chhay Thy.

"The Thnong wood is logged and transported from the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary illegally, with the complicity and protection of environmental officers in Lumphat. They have stocked the wood for export, and we saw eight chainsaws in Daun Penh Company as well," Thy said.

Even more wood was found in the Srepok River in Lumphat's Chey Uddom commune, where workers were moving the logs by boat, he added.

"The workers said the hundreds of pieces of Thnong wood belonged to Try Pheap, and that the wood was being carried to cars for transportation," Thy said.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai – Hoang Anh Lumphat's parent company – was accused in a scathing Global Witness report earlier this year of possessing nearly five times the legal amount of economic land concessions, and of contracting the controversial Pheap to clear and process the timber.

Commune chief Chim Theak seconded Adhoc's findings, confirming that logging took place in Lumphat, adding that wildlife officers at the sanctuary had gone so far as to bar police from entering.

"They have been logging since 2012 without anyone stopping them," Theak said. "We suspect that the company is conspiring with the sanctuary officers so they can log."

However, Lumphat District Governor Kong Srun maintained that the companies had not logged outside of the bounds of their concessions.

"I have already seen it. It was logged in the company's land, not in the wildlife sanctuary, because the company has received a concession from the state," Srun said.

Adhoc says it will continue to investigate the case.

Cambodia lags well behind its neighbours in a new study measuring the closeness of the government to its people.

The "government closeness index" ranks 182 countries based on the extent to which their politics are decentralised and their institutional politics connected with civil society.

The paper's authors, economist Maksym Ivanyna, a PhD candidate at Michigan State University, and Anwar Shah, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, aggregated the data to create the "decentralization index", then adjusted it by country to develop the index.

The Kingdom's decentralisation ranking of 121 places it well below Thailand at 38, Vietnam at 60 and Laos at 78.

The majority of the data used to rank the 182 countries, however, was collected in 2005 and doesn't factor in major recent changes in countries such as Syria – which ranked 120 – and Myanmar (179).

Decentralisation reforms have swept the globe in the past three decades, Ivanyna and Shah state in the paper, How Close Is Your Government to Its People? Worldwide Indicators on Localization and Decentralization, released last week.

"The resulting rankings could be helpful in understanding the genesis of the Arab Spring and other recent political movements and waves of dissatisfaction with governance around the world."

Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said he had yet to see the paper's rankings, but Cambodians were paying more attention to their government now than ever before.

"We feel the stability of this government is strong and we have consistently been working to improve our connection to the people," Sopheak said yesterday, adding that the strength of the government's connection to the people could be seen in people's ability to organise at grassroots level.

An opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Cambodia has called on Japan, its largest bilateral donor, to send "experts" to help conduct reforms of the electoral system following a two-day official visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Phnom Penh over the weekend.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said he had requested the technical assistance during the bilateral talks on Saturday, though he did not elaborate on what that might mean in practice.

"Cambodia has requested Japan's help … related to the reformation of elections. I would like to request that Prime Minister Abe consider sending experts or technicians to join the reform of the upcoming election," Hun Sen said at the joint press conference.

At a briefing later that night, reporters were told that while Abe would favourably consider such a request, no specific reforms were floated at the meeting between the two leaders.

The National Election Committee's official results of the July election showed that the ruling Cambodian People's Party won 68 seats and the Cambodia National Rescue Party won 55 seats. Independent observers and the opposition reported widespread allegations of electoral fraud during July's poll.

While the political deadlock has yet to be resolved, the ruling party formed a government and convened the National Assembly in September, but elected opposition lawmakers continue to boycott proceedings.

Kem Sokha, deputy president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, said yesterday that the request for election reform assistance was simply window dressing intended to deflect criticism of the prime minister.

"I don't think they believe that he [Hun Sen] is willing to reform [the electoral system]. He must form a committee to find the irregularities," Sokha told the Post.

"The international community and the democratic countries are well aware that the election in the fifth mandate has serious irregularities," he added.

Accords were also signed on education, security and health care, with an agreement expected to be made toward the eventual export of the Japanese health care model to Cambodia.

The two leaders also expressed their desire for an "early conclusion" to the Code of Conduct for the settlement of the South China Sea conflict, an issue that has seen Cambodia repeatedly accused of siding with benefactor China over fellow ASEAN members.

"The issue of grant aid, the attraction of Japanese investment to Cambodia, the cooperation between people and the connection of flights were the main topics of discussion," Hun Sen said. "The role of Japan in maintaining peace and security in the region and the world was also discussed," he said, referring to the South China Sea dispute.

An ASEAN-China joint statement issued last month revealed no breakthrough in talks over the dispute. China wants to settle the issue through a series of bilateral negotiations, not collectively, as Washington, Tokyo and some ASEAN members prefer.

The Japanese Embassy did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.

A man was arrested and sent to court for allegedly impersonating a one-star army general and attempting to encroach on villagers' land in Koh Kong province.

David Sim, 38, was arrested on Saturday while posing as a general, Major Nuon Vutha, commander of Khemarak Phumin town military police, said.

"He does not hold any position in the Ministry of National Defense," Vutha added.

"He was accused of posing as an officer in the army. He was sent to [Koh Kong] provincial court to be charged [yesterday] afternoon."

Sim was brought to the attention of the police by a local villager in Phum II village, Dang Tong commune, who accused Sim of removing demarcation posts and encroaching on his land.

When police questioned Sim over the allegations, he said he worked for the Ministry of National Defense but failed to provide a valid identification number or other documents to support his story.

A grisly traffic accident at a busy intersection claimed two lives yesterday morning when a large truck slammed into the back of a motorbike near the Monivong Bridge in Phnom Penh's Meanchey district, traffic
police said.

According to Traffic Police officer Sin Eung, victim Suon Nari, 30, was riding her motorbike with her mother, Mao Mach, 58, on the back, and her two sons, 5 and 3, in between. Just after crossing the bridge, Nari's moto was hit from behind by a truck driven by Ouk Dara, 34, causing the two women's heads to be dashed on the pavement, killing them at the scene.

The two young boys rolled under the truck, and escaped with only minor cuts and scrapes.

After striking the bike, the truck went on to collide with a parked car before coming to a stop.

"After checking the bodies of the two boys, we saw only scratches, and police handed them over to their granddad to clean their wounds at home, but the two bodies were sent by an ambulance to Sambour Meas pagoda for funeral rites," Eung said.

During questioning, Dara blamed the accident on brake failure, but an inspection revealed no problems, Eung added. Dara was ultimately taken to the police station for further questioning.

Police officer Seng Borey, who owned the parked car that the truck hit, dismissed Dara's explanation as an "excuse".

"This is the city centre, and one should drive carefully, and it is necessary to slow down," he said. "The suspect has to pay compensation to those of us who are victims."

Fruit vendor Im Kang, who works at the intersection and witnessed the accident, said that she could remember at least 10 serious accidents at the eastern end of Monivong Bridge since the beginning of the year, with more than one involving fatalities.

"I am very afraid. There are many accidents here and I think there are ghosts here that take people's lives," she said.