Better Factories Cambodia extended

Cambodia’s government and the International Labor Organization

(ILO) agreed to renew the Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) program after a new, three-year memorandum of understanding was signed on Wednesday.

The Better Factories program is an initiative by the ILO that aims to improve working conditions in garment factories while promoting productivity and competitiveness. Apart from Cambodia, worldwide participants of the ILO’s Better Work program are Haiti, Indonesia, Jordan, Lesotho, Nicaragua and Vietnam.

As part of the extension, the government and the ILO also decided to introduce public disclosure of non-compliant garment factories as well as “unions found to be violating the country’s labor law through illegal strikes or other unlawful industrial action by workers”. “The agreement also promotes the enforcement role of the Royal Government of Cambodia and acknowledges the re-introduction of public disclosure,” said ILO and government in a joint statement released on Wednesday.

Both stakeholders had earlier come under scrutiny – the ILO for not being transparent enough in its monitoring efforts and the Cambodian government for not enforcing the country’s labor laws enough. The report “Monitoring in the Dark” by researchers from Stanford University had criticized the ILO’s monitoring, asking it to be more transparent to bring about significant improvements to wages and working conditions.

Garment manufacturers and unions had criticized the government for being lax when enforcing labor laws, “leading to one of the highest rates of industrial strikes of any garment-producing country in the world” according to The Cambodia Daily.