Sophie Deviller and Suy Se -
Bopha should be in school but instead toils seven days a week in a searing brick kiln on the outskirts of Phnom Penh — a 14-year-old trapped in debt bondage in an industry preying on the poverty of Cambodia’s farmers.
Unpredictable weather linked to climate change is laying waste to Cambodian fields.
Saddled with debt from failed harvests, tens of thousands of farmers are turning to brick factories, where owners pay off their bills in exchange for labour.
The factories feed a surging construction sector, with high-rises cropping up around the capital Phnom Penh.
But for the farmers who bake the clay bricks, Cambodia’s newfound urban prosperity has passed them by.
“I’m not going to school, I’m trying to help pay back the $4,000 that we owe, even if it will take years,” Bopha said.
Cambodian labour law prohibits those aged 12-15 from working if the job is hazardous or interferes with their education.
Yet, Bopha works all week with her family.
They were driven into the industry two years ago after drought ruined their rice harvest, leaving them with no way of paying back money they borrowed to plant crops.
The University of London said in an October study that brick factories in Cambodia were creating a “multi-generational workforce of adults and children trapped in debt bondage — one of the most prevalent forms of modern slavery in the world”.
The link between climate change and debt bondage is stark, explains Naly Pilorge, head of Cambodian rights NGO Licadho.
“What is unique in the brick factories in Cambodia is that the vast majority of workers are imprisoned in debt bondage.”
Sov will soon be able to take a two-day holiday to return to her village in Stung Treng province in the north. But her husband and children must stay at the factory.
“The boss is afraid we will run away without paying,” she said.
She started working at the factory two decades ago with a debt of $2,500. Now, at 57, she owes double that due to medical treatments and the cost of raising her children.
Sok Kin, President of the Building and Wood Workers Trade Union of Cambodia, said bosses can be violent, but he cannot recall a case where any were prosecuted. — AFP
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