The exact cause of the sudden illness overcoming about 300 workers at the Hung Wah textile factory this week is unclear. The factory owners said nothing as dozens of employees were treated in hospital.
“I looked around me and everyone was collapsing, everyone was scared and crying,” worker Yan Chornai, 23, said from her hospital bed.
The faintings at Hung Wah, which produces clothing for Western brands, were not isolated incidents but part of a growing trend in the “sweatshops” that provide vital revenue for one of Asia’s poorest countries.
In another Phnom Penh factory, King Fashion Garment, around 300 people fell ill over two days early last month for reasons still unknown.
Some of the big brands have launched investigations into what non-government organisations say are more than 1,000 faintings this year by garment workers while toiling for long hours, eking out meagre salaries that help feed hundreds of thousands of poor rural families.
Swedish fashion brand H&M said it was consulting state agencies, workers and independent factory inspectors to find out what happened at Hung Wah this week.
“Worker health and safety in our supplier factories is of high priority to H&M. Accordingly, we have immediately started investigations as soon as we received information,” the company said in an e-mail to Reuters.
The increase in faintings this year is the latest in a glut of setbacks for an industry that grew 28 per cent and generated more than US$3 billion (S$3.6 billion) last year from its 300,000 workers at scores of factories, owned mostly by Chinese and Taiwanese companies.
The garment sector, Cambodia’s third-largest currency earner after agriculture and tourism, has been plagued by strikes and protests over working conditions and pay.
The current monthly salary for Cambodian garment workers is about US$65, a figure employees complain is insufficient in the face of rising domestic food and fuel prices. Many take on excessive overtime to the point of exhaustion in overcrowded, poorly ventilated factories with low safety standards and high exposure to chemicals.
A report in April by Reuters about a spate of illnesses at a factory producing footwear exclusively for Puma prompted the German sports brand to commission an independent inquiry by the Washington-based Fair Labor Association.
It concluded there was a “strong possibility” that an estimated 104 faintings over a two-day period were caused by exposure to chemicals, poor ventilation and exhaustion from excessive hours.
Following the report’s release on Monday, Puma moved swiftly, producing a plan limiting working time at the Huey Cheun factory employing 3,400 people to 60 hours per week and overtime to two hours daily.
It also promised health and safety training in the use and storage of chemicals and medical personnel on site at all times.
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