Transported Like Pigs: Cambodia's Garment Makers Risk Death Just to Get to Work

[geovalin]

Transported Like Pigs: Cambodia's Garment Makers Risk Death Just to Get to Work

By Charles Parkinson

Early one morning in mid-May, 39 people, mostly garment factory workers, crammed into a 15-seat minivan in Cambodia. It was a journey they made every day, traveling from their rural community in the southeast of the country to a sprawling industrial zone about 20 miles away, where they made clothes for various major western brands.

Except this time, they didn't make it to work. Less than an hour after they set out, a speeding tourist bus pulled out of the opposite lane and smashed into the van head on, killing 15 of those on board instantly. Three more died within hours and another died in intensive care a few days later.

The dead, mostly young women, served as a grim illustration of the perils faced by the half a million people employed in Cambodia's garment trade, which generates an estimated $6 billion per year. While the exploitative conditions and dire safety standards in the southeast Asian clothing industry have been much publicized, what workers have to do to get to and from the factories is actually more dangerous than anything they undergo while they are inside them.

Factory workers earning just a few dollars a day have little choice but to pile into minivans or flatbed trucks often driven by unlicensed drivers on dangerous roads, every morning and night. A study released earlier this year by the Cambodian Ministry of Labor's National Social Security Fund reported 73 garment workers died in crashes during their commutes last year, a near 10 percent rise on the 67 killed in 2013.'We see pigs transported in the same manner here'

source: https://news.vice.com/article/transported-like-pigs-cambodias-garment-makers-risk-death-just-to-get-to-work?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

[elgordo38]

Its to bad Obama could not squeeze Cambodia into the TPP. The large retailers in the USA could have a field day paying these people slave wages and then putting their blood stained products into their US stores and charged full retail price. Just imagine the profit margins staggering. These Money Merchants will go to extreme ends of the planet and pay slave wages to fill their store with merchandise. Its a disgrace. Can they wring out any more profit?

[duckmandon]

Thailand is the same. Happens every day. No caring for life. Just money.

[Jonmarleesco]

Different country, same s . . t.

[Benmart]

Its to bad Obama could not squeeze Cambodia into the TPP. The large retailers in the USA could have a field day paying these people slave wages and then putting their blood stained products into their US stores and charged full retail price. Just imagine the profit margins staggering. These Money Merchants will go to extreme ends of the planet and pay slave wages to fill their store with merchandise. Its a disgrace. Can they wring out any more profit?

Seems off topic as this centered on inhuman and unsafe transport for workers. Any topic can be used for anti-US, anti-merchant, anti-anti anything rhetoric I suppose.