A group of 20 Cambodian migrant workers who say they were paid salaries far beneath the wage promised by a recruitment agency that sent them to Thailand earlier this month filed a complaint yesterday with military police in Banteay Meanchey province.

Pin Pao, 38, one of the workers from Battambang’s Thmar Koul district, said yesterday the recruitment firm IIS Company promised them they could earn between 8,000 and 10,000 baht per day working at a chicken factory in Thailand.

But just two weeks after they started working at the factory at the beginning of January the whole group quit after discovering they would earn just 2,800 to 3,000 baht while working in unendurably bad conditions.  

“Before we believed the company that we would get high salaries, but when we worked there it was completely the opposite,” she said, adding thatthey were given almost no rest time.

Rather than paying for household and travel expenses as promised, the factory charged them for water, electricity and transport, and made them pay 25 baht per day for their shoes, she said.

Hom Mut, military police chief in Banteay Meanchey’s Poipet town, said police had now intervened in the dispute.

“We will find a solution for them by calling the company to find justice,” he said.

Chhoun Sarong, a communications representative for IIS, said that the company would cooperate with the workers if it was found that the chicken factory had exploited them.