Rulling party Senator Ly Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar Company announced yesterday that it had amended its hiring policy to forbid contractors from employing children, while at the same time, opposition parliamentarian Mu Sochua made public her plans to visit the company to investigate its labour practices.

According to a copy of a January 9 internal memo provided by the company – and issued five days after an article was published in the Post detailing the widespread use of child labour at the company’s Kampong Speu sugarcane plantation – the company warned contractors responsible for hiring plantation labourers that anyone caught hiring persons under the age of 18 would be fined 50,000 riel ($12.50) on their first offence, and have their contract terminated on their second.

Sok Mey, a 13-year-old child labourer, cuts sugarcane on land owned by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company in Kampong Speu province earlier this month. The company is owned by CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat. Photograph: Vireak Mai/Phnom Penh Post

Continue reading: Sugar company axes child labour

Source: (The Phnom Penh Post – January 15, 2013)