Three employees of a labour recruitment firm whose training centre was raided by police on Tuesday were sent to the municipal court yesterday evening.

The workers had been detained by military police for two days of questioning in connection with the alleged recruitment of underage girls.

Officials said that five girls were among 26 women removed from a Century (Cambodia) Manpower Co Ltd training centre in Sen Sok district’s Teuk Thla commune, following a complaint to NGO Action Pour

Les Enfants in August by the mother of a missing 14-year-old girl.

Chea Chhouk, chief of the municipal anti-human trafficking military police, said that officials had prepared documents and sent the three employees to court for further questioning.

“We completed our questioning of the workers and the company employees today ... [there are] two women and a man,” he said, adding that police were still seeking to arrest the owner of the company.

“We sent the company employees to the court for charging through the law, but we also seek to arrest the owner of the company in order to take action through the law,” Chea Chhouk said, adding that those rescued had been initially taken care of by the municipal social affairs department.

Sorn Sophal, director of that department, said that the underage girls had been sent on to an NGO and the other women had been sent back to their homes.

“We cooperated with the organisations to help the workers [and NGO] … took five underage girls to take care of them and contact their families [in order] to return them home,” he said.

Labour recruitment firms in the Kingdom have come under increasing scrutiny in recent months following a spate of alleged abuses of Cambodian domestic workers, particularly in Malaysia, by their employers and the agencies that recruit and train them.