Missing owners

More than 1,300 garment workers, who fear the Taiwanese owner of Supertex Ltd has sold off company assets and fled without paying them wages, protested yesterday outside a factory in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district.

Rose Channa, a worker representative, said workers still had not received last month’s wages.

“We don’t have money to buy food and support our daily lives,” she said, adding they were each owed between US$85 and $200.

Relevant ministries and CPP parliamentarian Men Sam An had failed to responded to letters sent last week seeking their intervention in the dispute, she said.  Tep Kim Vannary, president of the Cambodian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, said officials from the Ministry of Labour had visited the factory but had been unable to meet the owner.

Ly Vannchay, Supertex factory administrative manager, could not be reached yesterday, but another staff member, who declined to named, said the factory’s owner had not been sighted for many days. Ken Loo, secretary general of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia, said yesterday he didn’t know where the owner of the GMAC listed factory was.