Cambodia's rapid urbanisation fuels child labour

New buildings are popping up across Cambodia as its construction industry continues to flourish. However, a closer look into local brick production reveals the country's rapid urbanisation is driving one of the most common forms of modern slavery.

PHNOM PENH: Pak Rattana is a skinny 15-year-old with a simple daily routine: He gets up early, eats breakfast and carries thousands of bricks to the kilns.

The boy lives at a brick factory in Chroy Changva on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Its dusty ground and fiery kilns have been his home, workplace and playground for more than a decade.

While other children go to school, Rattana carries bricks.

Rattana sits with his younger sister during a break from work. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)

Every day, mostly in the blazing sun, he moves up to 10,000 blocks of clay from the factory’s yard to the furnaces, where they are fired at a very high temperature. Each day begins at dawn and ends in the dark, with one break in between. 

There is no weekend for him, and hardly any reward.

“They don’t pay until I finish one whole line,” the boy said, referring to long rows of hundreds of thousands of bricks in the backyard, neatly stacked up to dry in the sun. It takes him three days to finish one row and in return, the factory owner pays him US$15.

“I don’t really know how much money I make. My mother takes it all.”

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