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COMMENT: Shootings in Cambodia highlight importance of supply chain responsibility
Puma is investigating a shooting at one of its suppliers in Cambodia, which occurred following a people’s tribunal on the state of poverty pay in the Cambodian garment industry held earlier this month.
According to local reports, three workers were shot during a protest outside a factory in Cambodia that supplies the sportswear brand Puma, leaving two in critical condition.
Workers alleged that a police officer opened fire on protestors outside the Kaoway Sports factory in Bavet town, Svay Rieng province, near Cambodia’s border with Vietnam.
Over one thousand workers from three factories in the Manhattan Special Economic Zone in Bavet city were protesting for better working conditions, including a salary increase of $10 per month over their $61 per month minimum wage salary, when the widely reported shooting occurred on Monday morning. The workers were also seeking transportation subsidies and 50 cents per day for lunch.
One of the factories targeted by the protests was Kaoway Sports, which supplies footwear to Puma. International brands Clarks, New Balance, Ecko, K 1 X and Body Glove source from the other two factories: Kingmaker and Sheico.
Garment and textile exports have rocketed in recent years and now total $4.25 billion compared with $3.4 billion last year, but Cambodia’s minimum wage for factory workers has remained the lowest of all its neighbouring states, said LICADHO, the Cambodian League for the Protection and Defence of Human Rights.
"According to the Peoples' Tribunal on Minimum Living Wage and Decent Working Conditions as a Fundamental Human Right, recent calculations based on undisputed nutritional needs show Cambodia's workers earn less than a third of a living wage," said Yeng Virak, Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) executive director. "At the current rate, workers are at risk of consuming far too few calories per day. They can't even begin to think about saving for their futures."
Now LICADHO and CLEC have called on the buyers of good produced at these factories to cease relying on the biased information supplied by the factories themselves and to send a team of investigators to conduct their own reviews of the incident instead.
At the tribunal, Puma and fellow sportswear brand Adidas said they were taking part in a multi-brand initiative to carry out research in order to identify what a ‘fair wage’ in the garment industry could be.
But worryingly, brands like H&M and Gap refused to attend the hearing, despite the fact that testimonies were centred on violations at their supplier factories and they are the largest buyers in the country.
The shootings, which follow reports of mass fainting, slum living conditions, malnutrition and debt of workers in the Cambodian garment industry, highlight the importance of brands taking responsibility for their own supply chains to bring about a change.
