Some 34 workers protested yesterday in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district in front of a work agency they accuse of sending them to Thailand with false job promises despite having paid a hefty $350 finder’s fee.

Mok Mi, police chief in Sen Sok’s Kriang Thnong commune, said the workers were promised jobs in a food-processing plant in Thailand by the Supply and Training Center, but found none waiting and now demand their payments back.

“After the workers protested, we researched the agency and found it was operating illegally. It was not on the list of companies allowed to send workers to Thailand by the Ministry of Labour; it only opened last month”, Mi said.

One protester, named Chan Vuthea, 23, said the company had “cheated” the workers.

According to Mi, police have arrested the agency’s owner, a woman named Sek Chakrya, 28, and ordered her to pay back all the workers, a demand she promised to comply with.

Another jobs agency in the capital, the Money Center in Dangkor district, faced protests yesterday from nine workers who also claim to have been tricked into paying for phony jobs in Thailand.