Exploitative Labour Brokerage Practices in Cambodia: The Role and Practices of Private Recruitment Agencies1

Labour brokering is a potentially lucrative business in Cambodia. With a rapidly increasing labour force which grows at an annual rate of 3.5 percent (since 2001), Cambodia has a sizeable young population who are hungry for employment. The government faces a tough challenge of creating 300,000 new jobs every year in order to absorb the new entrants into the labour market (Oum et. al., 2005). It is in this context that employment companies play a significant role, by servicing the needs of Cambodia’s workforce and alleviating domestic unemployment problems. According to the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MOLVT), a total of 9,118 Cambodian men and women have been officially sent by licensed recruitment agencies to work overseas. Women make up 58 percent of this figure. This figure is infinitesimal if we consider that there are more than 180,000 irregular Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand and tens of thousands more who have been smuggled or trafficked int