Cambodia sees improvements in working conditions of garment industry

Cambodia has seen remarkable improvements in labor standards in the garment and footwear industry, said an International Labor Organization (ILO) report released on Tuesday.

Assessed on 464 factories, the report found that the overall number of violations on 21 critical issues fell from 811 in 2014 to 631 this year, the ILO's Better Factories Cambodia Program said in a press release.

Over the same time, the proportion of factories in compliance with all publicly reported issues rose from 32 percent to 41 percent, the release said.

However, the report noted that not all areas have shown progress. While critical issues relating to such areas as emergency preparedness, discrimination, child labor and payment of wages and allowances have shown steady gains, other areas are stable and some have declined in rates of compliance.

"Continued effort from all partners to drive sustainable change in the industry is still required," said Esther Germans, ILO's Better Factories Cambodia program manager.

Garment and footwear industry is the largest foreign exchange earner for the Southeast Asian nation. According to government figures, the country earned 4.1 billion U.S. dollars from garment and footwear exports in the first six months of 2018, accounting for over 70 percent of the kingdom's total export.

The industry consists of about 1,100 factories with more than 740,000 workers, mostly females.