Jum’s words tumble out over the phone, his voice growing ever more frantic.

Between sobs, he says he’s trapped on a Malaysian plantation run by government owned Felda, one of the world’s largest palm oil companies. His boss confiscated and then lost his Indonesian passport, he says, leaving him vulnerable to arrest. Night after night, he has been forced to hide from authorities, sleeping on the jungle floor, exposed to the wind and the rain. His biggest fear: the roaming tigers.

All the while, Jum says his supervisor demanded he keep working, tending the heavy reddish-orange palm oil fruit that has made its way into the supply chains of the planet’s most iconic food and cosmetics companies like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.

“I am not a free man anymore,” he says, his voice cracking. “I desperately want to see my mom and dad. I want to go home!”

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The post Palm Oil Labor Abuses Linked to World’s Top Brands, Banks first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Minebea, the largest Japanese company in Cambodia, officially opened a third manufacturing plant in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone on December 8 to coincide with the fifth anniversary of its presence in the country. Yoshihisa Kainuma, president and CEO of Mineba (Cambodia), told reporters at the opening ceremony that the company was able to expand in the Kingdom due to support by the government. “All our goods manufactured in Cambodia are for export. Our main markets are in China, Japan, US and Europe – and these countries demand high quality products,” he said. The main products manufactured by Minebea include micro actuators, brush DC motors and power brushless motors. Koth Boran, a supervisor at Minebea (Cambodia), said the parent company in Japan had invested more than $50 million in the third factory. He added that Minebea had created about 20,000 jobs at all levels with its three manufacturing plants operating in the country.

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On a recent November morning, farmer U Soe Myint Aung was busy collecting rice from his harvester and loading it into bags. It is heavy work but still he knows he is lucky; with 17 acres of paddy field situated along a road in Kwinyar village, in Kangyidaunt township, he can afford to own a harvester. Most farmers in Ayeyarwady Region, the country’s ‘rice bowl’ and home to some 10 million people, lack enough land and capital to afford use of mechanical harvesters, while their uneven plots are often difficult to access with the machines. The lack of mechanised farming has become a pressing problem, many farmers and officials here said, as manual labour is in short supply in the delta region, where farming remains labour intensive. “Due to labour shortages farmers can’t plant their paddies in a timely manner,” U Soe Myint Aung said. “Also, the harvest can be delayed and the crops could be damaged by rains; such paddy doesn’t get a good price.”

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The post As labourers leave Myanmar delta, farmers struggle to mechanise first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The Ministry of Labor has established a working group to investigate the use of child labor at some brick-making factories to the north of the capital, but has yet to find a case about debt bondage and child labor as mentioned in a recent report by rights group Licadho. On December 2 – International Day for the Abolition of Slavery – Licadho published “Built on Slavery: Debt Bondage and Child Labor in Cambodia’s Brick Factories,” which presents evidence of the widespread use of contemporary forms of slavery in Cambodia’s brick-manufacturing industry. On the same day of the report, the Ministry of Labor released an announcement, establishing a working group to investigate the claims and expressed disappointment that Licadho had not immediately reported incidents of child labor to authorities. Ministry spokesman Heng Sour told Khmer Times yesterday that the assigned working group had investigated some brick-making factories along national roads 6A and 1 near Phnom Penh, but had not discovered any of the cases raised by Licadho. He said the ministry would wait for cooperation and detailed information from the rights organization if they decide to share their findings, adding that the ministry would absolutely prevent the use of child labor in the form of slavery in Cambodia.

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The post Ministry checking brick factories first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

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 on December 2 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.

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The post Boom built on ‘slavery’ first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

With Cambodia’s traditional cash crops struggling to compete in global supply chains, the Kingdom could carve out a lucrative niche in commercial cannabis harvesting and exports – provided it acts fast to take advantage of the falling legal barriers, a Cambodia-based American innovator has argued. Jim Plamondon, a former technical evangelist for Microsoft, said cannabis, the flowering plant that produces marijuana, was a potential goldmine for the Kingdom’s agricultural sector, which employs two-thirds of the country’s workforce. He said US elections earlier this month were a tipping point, with more than half of the 50 US states having now legalised marijuana for medical use, such as treatment of glaucoma, and seven states legalising it for recreational use. Cannabis legislation by the US federal government is now widely seen as inevitable, he said, which would remove the main barrier to international legislation and trade. And if the US allows marijuana imports, first movers in the market stand to reap billions. “The key point is that after the November elections in the US, [full legalisation] is inevitable,” Plamondon said on November 29, adding that if the Kingdom acted now, it could build a world-class cannabis supply chain for export in about five years.

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The post Prospect for a budding industry first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

ASEAN Dialogue partners are urging Southeast Asian countries to pick up the slack in providing better access to employment for its skilled workers in an effort to achieve the target of free flowing labor in the region. Efforts to enhance skilled labor mobility in ASEAN have mainly relied on the Mutual Recognition Arrangements on qualifications in professional services, but the slow pace of ASEAN in implementing the framework has prevented more people from experiencing the benefits of the ASEAN Economic Community. According to South Korean Ambassador to ASEAN, Suh Jeong-in, ASEAN MRAs are important not only in realizing AEC benefits but also to complete the supply chains established across the region by multinational corporations. Suh argued that Korean companies were finding it hard to pick up skilled workers that matched their requirements from the available talent pool in their countries of operations.

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The post Mobility of skilled labor needed for successful AEC first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

ASEAN labour officials are meeting over two days in Vientiane to update progress, share experiences and seek ways for future cooperation on labour practices. The ninth meeting of Senior Labour Officials Meeting’s Working Group, on progressive labour practices to enhance the competitiveness of ASEAN, will conclude on November 24 and is being attended by Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Mr. Bounkhong Lasoukan, Director General of the Labour Management Department under the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Mr. Phongxaysack Inthalath, and senior labour officials from ASEAN countries. The government of Laos highly values the importance of the SLOM-WG meeting because it is a venue for ASEAN officials to update each other on the progress of labour practices, share experiences and seek ways for further cooperation, Mr. Bounkhong Lasoukan told the meeting on November 23. He said its main purpose was for senior labour officials to update themselves on completed and planned projects over the year since the 8th SLOM-WG Meeting to enhance the competitiveness of ASEAN.

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An International Labour Organization official on Sunday urged local unions to present their views on the contentious Trade Union Law to the body’s Committee of Experts, a request that has so far found little traction. The ILO’s Committee of Experts will meet in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 23 and take up the government’s report on the recently promulgated Union Law. The committee routinely assesses reports on legislation passed by member states and measures its compliance with ratified ILO conventions. At a meeting of independent and pro-government unionists on Sunday, Alain Pelcé, a senior international labour standards and labour law specialist with the ILO, said he again pushed unions to send a letter to the committee, which would be then considered during their assessment of the Union Law. “I was at the meeting yesterday and insisted again in my presentation on the importance for the Committee of Experts to have the views of the unions,” he said, via email.

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A World Bank investigation into a tea plantation project in India that it jointly finances with tea giant Tata Global Beverages has found that it has failed to tackle alleged abuses of impoverished workers, the group said on November 9. The International Finance Corporation—a member of the World Bank Group—said its accountability office began a probe into the project, run by Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited, after reports tea pickers were being exploited. In a statement emailed to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the IFC said it welcomed the investigation by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman and would work towards improving conditions for workers in plantations in India’s Assam state. “IFC is continually working with APPL in its ongoing programme of improving living and working conditions and will continue to collaborate with the CAO on the next steps, post-audit,” it said.

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The post Tata Tea project fails to protect Indian workers first appeared on Open Development Mekong.