MaximsNewsNetwork: CAMBODIA GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

MaximsNewsNetwork: 17 October 2009 - UNTV - United Nations: For a decade, the lives of young Cambodian women were transformed by jobs in the textile industry. But the global economic crisis changed all that, threatening to undo ten years of progress.

Over the last decade economic growth has helped lift Cambodia out of its poverty. The signs were everywhere; bustling construction sites around Phnom Penh; young workers filing into factories, filling orders for eager clients abroad.




More than 400,000 jobs in the textile industry fuelled the hopes of many young women whose earnings in the city helped support their extended families in the countryside.

SOUNDBITE (Kymer) Ny Sopheak:
I worked in the packing section of a textile factory. I earned sometimes $60 a month from the factory work and I sent $10 a month to my father.

But that factory, like dozens of others, has now closed. The global recession scared investors and shut down factories.
Twenty-three-year-old Ny Sopheak, like 50,000 other Cambodians, recently lost her job in the garment industry.
This in a country where not having a job can mean not eating, or perhaps just having one meal a day.
Today Ny is sharing one egg and some rice with her roommate, Horn Devy who also lost her factory job. Thats one egg between two people. Horn feels she cant go on much longer.

Horn is only 15 years old. She was sent to work to help out her family, small-time farmers and basket weavers who cant make ends meet.
Horns mother says she worries about her, so young, and away from the family. Even so, she wanted Horn to earn money, so that her brothers can finish school.
But having lost her job, Horn has gone from providing for her family to becoming an extra burden. Asked how she feels about this, she says,
Her story is unusual because of her young age, but all over Cambodias capital there are women who are falling into abject poverty as they lose their jobs in the textile factories.
Meanwhile, thousands of factory workers have turned to the streets to pressure the government to guarantee their jobs, their incomes, and their access to food.

And while Cambodia has been hard-hit, other countries are worried too. Guaranteeing the availability of food for everyone is now an urgent issue for governments across Asia-Pacific.

Many governments are now looking at how to invest in agriculture, to stem tide of migration towards the cities, and to help make food more affordable.

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Cambodia
• global economic crisis
• textile industry
• Phnom Penh
• UNTV
• UN
• United Nations
• financial downturn
• MaximsNews Network

[agiar1]

this sad:(

[sambath23]

Very heart broken to see Khmer people still facing poverty when the government is full of corruptions. I went to Cambodia recently to visit my cousins and things were really bad for the poor people.

[vichhaykhiev]

One egg??? Oh ma god.. I spent at least $10 for my Dinner...