Fifty workers were hospitalised yesterday morning after a truck carrying them to work crashed in Svay Rieng province, local authorities reported.

At about 6:30am, inexperienced 35-year-old driver Peng Heaksokea rolled the truck over, leaving more than a dozen of the passengers with head injuries, Svay Rieng provincial traffic police chief Ouch Saron said. The truck rolled over because it was overloaded, he added.

“I have learned that the driver had just learned how to drive, so he was a bit careless,” Saron said yesterday, noting that Heaksokea initially fled the scene, but was later found by police and arrested.

Traffic accidents involving overcrowded trucks carrying workers have been a reoccurring problem in the Kingdom for years. In June, 40 workers were injured in Svay Rieng’s Tai Seng Special Economic Zone when the two trucks carrying them hit one another.

Seven workers died in similar traffic accidents on one day in late January.