Boom built on ‘slavery’
The use of debt bondage to trap workers in “modern day slavery” is widespread in many of Cambodia’s brick-making factories, indicates research by rights group Licadho, whose findings suggest the Kingdom’s recent building boom is built on the illegal practice.
In a report released today titled Built on Slavery: Debt Bondage and Child Labour in Cambodia’s Brick Factories, the organisation documents the exploitation of both adults and children at factories in Tbong Khmum, Kandal and Phnom Penh, which every day funnel tens of thousands of bricks to construction sites around the capital.
Through interviews with about 50 workers, Licadho found all but one were working to pay off loans of between $1,000 and $6,000 provided by owners, who used bondage to guarantee a “long-term, cheap and compliant workforce”, the authors argue.
Paid “by piece” rates – cash per brick amounting to between $2 and $10 per day – the labourers were often unable to repay the money, leaving them trapped in perpetual servitude and poverty.
Further, the debt bondage – which is illegal under Cambodian and international law – has ensnared multiple generations of the same families, a major reason for the prevalence of child labour in the hazardous industry, according to the report, released to coincide with the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery.
Visits by the Post to two brick factories this week confirmed the practice appeared widespread. One factory owner ac-knowledged that some businesses, on the lookout for good workers, would even poach labourers from other sites by acquiring their debts.
Noting authorities were well aware of the practice, the report calls on the government and other stakeholders – such as international construction companies buying the cheap bricks – to end “impunity” for brick factory owners.
“Until this occurs, this brutal form of contemporary slavery will continue to flourish inside Cambodia,” the authors state.
“Until this occurs, this brutal form of contemporary slavery will continue to flourish inside Cambodia,” the authors state.
Recruitment
As Phnom Penh expands upwards and outwards, brick production has surged, with Licadho focusing on 11 clusters of factories north of the capital along national roads 5 and 6, totalling more than 130 individual sites and thousands of workers.
As Phnom Penh expands upwards and outwards, brick production has surged, with Licadho focusing on 11 clusters of factories north of the capital along national roads 5 and 6, totalling more than 130 individual sites and thousands of workers.
Many of those drawn into the industry usually accrue debt in their local village to neighbours or money lenders, often because of health emergencies or crop failures, the report explains. Unable to pay, they transfer their debt to factory owners, whose offers of no-interest loans that can be paid off through work often spread via word-of-mouth.
Such was the case for 59-year-old Von Pho, a former vegeta-ble and rice farmer from Kandal province’s Muk Kampoul district, who now earns about $2 a day stacking and moving bricks and carting firewood for kilns at a small factory in Prek Anhchanh commune.
The mother of two, whose children also work at brick factories, started working at the site about three years ago after she was unable to pay a debt to neighbours borrowed to buy food.
Like most of her co-workers – comprising about five families living in ramshackle corrugated iron shacks on the property’s edge – she remains in debt to the owner, owing $150, which she says she’s made little progress in paying.
“I can work here but won’t pay the debt for 10 or 20 years,” Pho told the Post yesterday as she loaded a cart with firewood together with her son-in-law.
“I can work here but won’t pay the debt for 10 or 20 years,” Pho told the Post yesterday as she loaded a cart with firewood together with her son-in-law.
“I earn around 8,000 riel [about $2]. It depends on how much I can do. I get 3 riel per brick, so to get 30,000 riel, it would be 10,000 bricks, and to get that I’d almost die. But I don’t know what else to do. I have no choice. It is not enough for eating, but besides this, I don’t know what else there is.
“If I had money, I could pay the boss at any time, but if not I will work here until I carry a stick,” she said, picking up a stick and mimicking the motions of an elderly person using a cane.
No place for children
Amid the machinery used to process clay and the kilns heated to between 900 and 1,200 degrees centigrade to bake bricks, work at the factories remains extremely hazardous, with accidents and injuries occurring frequently, notes Licadho.
Amid the machinery used to process clay and the kilns heated to between 900 and 1,200 degrees centigrade to bake bricks, work at the factories remains extremely hazardous, with accidents and injuries occurring frequently, notes Licadho.
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