Sick migrant workers eye home

About 50 legal Cambodian migrant workers were set to return home from Thailand on Thursday after becoming ill while working at a refrigerated seafood packing factory in Songkla province.

Hay Diep, 43, of Banteay Meanchey province’s Poipet town, said two of his children were among the returned workers, who asked that they be allowed to return after the excessively low working temperatures caused them to become sick.

“We contacted our children about their work and they told us that it was cold and that they couldn’t stand it, asking to come back,” Hay Diep said today. He said he did not know the name of the factory.

Hay Diep said that according to his children, several hundred Cambodians were legally employed at the factory, but the returned workers were recent arrivals who had been employed for less than one month.

His children gained work at the factory through the CCM labour agency in Poipet, he said, and were promised 9,000 baht (US$298) per month, plus 30 baht per additional hour of overtime....read the full story in tomorrow’s Phnom Penh Post or see the updated story online from 3PM UTC/GMT +7 hours.