Sitting in front of his apartment – a ground-level unit furnished with a flat-screen TV, a couch and a motorbike parked inside – Chea Tha, manager of an apartment complex in an area of the capital surrounded by garment factories, said rent there has remained the same since 2009.

In the same complex, sitting in front of her 2-by-2.5-metre apartment, which holds little more than a wooden bunk, Ouy Sambunn said rent typically rises along with the minimum wage, long a common practice in Cambodia.

“When the minimum wage increased from $80 to $100 [last year], the owner of the house increased rent … so I think it will happen again,” Sambunn, a 35-year-old garment worker, said a day after another minimum wage increase was announced on Wednesday.

“When the minimum wage was $60, my living conditions were better than now, because at that time, the price of goods was cheap and the rent was only $15.”

Beginning January 1, garment workers earning the minimum wage will make $128 a month, a bump of $28. But labour unions and advocates are hoping the government will go a step further and place controls on rent and food prices, which usually rise in tandem with salaries.

While the middle-income tenants many landlords prefer tend to have alternative housing options, garment workers living near their factories are essentially a captive audience, leaving them vulnerable to capricious rent increases, economist Srey Chanthy said yesterday.

“Not so many people are putting their investment into [low-cost] accommodations,” Chanthy said, noting that the rent hikes are usually not the result of extra financial burdens for landlords. “I think it’s pure profit for the [landlords].”

The Cambodian Union Federation president Chuon Mom Thol yesterday called on the government to introduce legislation to prevent exploitative price boosts, noting that government representatives said Wednesday that the matter will be investigated.

“The government [must] control the food price, rental, transportation, etc,” Mom Thol said. “Even if we increase [minimum wage] to $200, the workers get no benefit; it’s nonsense.”