Outlook mixed for garment sector

BETTER Factories Cambodia, a division of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), released a report Wednesday citing continued improvements in labour law compliance among hundreds of Cambodian garment factories, but experts fear these gains are overshadowed by grim overall prospects for the industry.

Though acknowledging that approximately 60,000 jobs have been lost in the Kingdom's garment sector since November of last year, the ILO reported that 99 percent of surveyed factories paid full-time workers at least minimum wage, and that 84 percent of factories had at least one union.

Just one underage worker was discovered among the 175 factories visited during the study, which was conducted from January 2008 to April 2009.Questions remain, however, about how reflective the ILO figures are of the industry as a whole. Of 280 factories covered in the study, 258 were still operating as of July, Better Factories Cambodia manager Tuomo Poutiainen said. Click to read more...