Long Heng: Cambodia launches officially national labor migration policy

Cambodia launches officially national labor migration policy


The ministry of labor and vocational training of Cambodia on 10 August officially launched labor migration policy to strengthen effective management of labor forces that have been sent to work abroad, and promote migration’s positive development outcomes after the growth of labor forces in the country. Currently Cambodia ’s population includes a large proportion of young and they are entering the labor forces at a rate of about 250,000 persons per annum.



“The paper document of national migration labor policy for Cambodian workers is a new chronology and a turning point for our labor forces that sometimes has faced with negative matters at working abroad. I considered the paper as new measures for labor management more effectively,” H.E Vong Sauth, minister of labor and vocational training (MoLVT) said in his opening remark of launching of the national migration policy in Phnom Penh .



The document also will avoid the right violence such labor exploitation, human trafficking and liberty for workers,” he said, adding that the paper document is very important for other operation in fields of labor migration and will provide the benefits for local labor forces in right defense and it is historical event for us that have such a policy for migration.



The document will be a comprehensive policy for labor employment and it will implement effectively soon with all stakeholders through this action plan in conformity with poverty reduction policy. Furthermore, it also will improve the social matters in the country, unemployment rate, reduce illegal migration labor, eliminate children labor exploitation, sexual abuse, and spread of AIDS/HIV and family violence and local workers are not blind and dark anymore for working abroad,” he stresses.



The minister added: “The ministry wants ensure labor recruitment in legal processing and send local workers to work abroad in legal term to avoid social disorders and reputation of the country and the ministry will track for our workers to get skill before they go and returns. The processing of recruitment need to be followed up to match with this policy,”



“The ministry also is preparing a new sub-decree and it will be released to implement for sending local workers to foreign countries and compose the book for local workers who want to work abroad as guideline for them to better understand about the legal procedures and situation of countries that they want to go. All these things, we want our local worker to avoid cheating through illegal migration workers,” he highlighted.



Seng Sakada, director general of labor department of labor ministry said that government policy needs the recruitment agencies to keep cash deposits of 100,000 dollars in bank as measure to prevent any cheating processing. Currently we have 62 legal labor agencies that permitted from the ministry in recruiting the local workers to work in Malaysia , South Korea , and Japan , and Thailand .



“Number of Cambodian workers in Malaysia has 16,580, 10284 workers in Thailand , 97 people in Japan , and South Korea about 8,777 workers. Our workers were sent to work in these countries legally and in average they earned about 800 US dollars per month in overall. For sixth month of this year, Malaysia gets 6474 new workers from Cambodia ,” Seng said, noting at the same time, we could not count for illegal Khmer workers in Thailand through entering border crossing illegally and to other countries. Cambodia government permitted workers to serve in the countries include Thailand , Malaysia , South Korea and Japan . "And we need to expand more for labor market and we plan to send more workers to other countries in future when the MoU are inked soon we will send to Qatar , and Kuwait , Singapore and Arabic Saudi," he noted.



"Local workers also send the money for helping their family and their family’s living condition also is better,” he said, adding that this is a fact of poverty reduction. We need our workers to learn new skills when they returned and integrate in society. They could work with the skill that they learn foreign countries,” Seng stresses.



Ministry said unemployment levels provide another measure of labor market performance in Cambodia . Survey reports in 2000, 2001, and 2004 showed rather low unemployment rates 2.5, 1.8 and 0.8 per cent respectively. As did the 2008 census, unemployment rate stood about 1.7 per cent. Among the unemployed, female workers were predictably harder hit, with an unemployment rate of about 1.8 per cent compared with 1.5 per cent among men.



In 2010, the labor force from 15-24 years, there are about 3.540,428 people seeking jobs including 1,740,589 female. And in 2020, about 3,253, 722 people will seek jobs including 1,607, 965 female. In 2008, census recorded that youth population at 2.8 million and in 2010 projected to reach 3.5 million increasing at an annual growth rate of 4.3 per cent. Seng said that government needs to respond to the challenge posed by the increasing number of youth seeking jobs.

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