This file photo taken in 2009 shows women working in a Phnom Penh garment factory. The sector was badly hit by the global economic crisis, forcing many women to find employment elsewhere. (Photo by: Tracey Shelton)By Sarah Ireland
The Phnom Penh Post
YEAR 2010 will be a year of challenges for Cambodia. We all know about the effect of the global economic downturn. In Cambodia, the four main pillars of the economy – garment, construction, tourism and agriculture – have been affected. Businesses cut spending. Jobs were lost.
People migrated to other areas to look for work. And some went back to work in agriculture. Women in export-oriented and service industries are particularly vulnerable after overseas demand plummeted with eroding consumer confidence in American and European markets.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, as many as 63,000 Cambodian garment factory workers, or 18 percent of the total industry workforce, lost their jobs from September 2008 to May 2009. Many of them are women who had to go back to the farm sector only to find that there was nothing much to do at home because there was no rain for their rain-fed agriculture. The annual floods and Typhoon Ketsana that hit parts of the country late last year damaged thousands of hectares of rice crops in the last harvesting season and made their return to the farm sector a nonviable coping mechanism for many women.
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