Two people were killed and 24 injured when a cargo truck collided with a factory shuttle vehicle on Wednesday morning in Preah Sihanouk province.
According to a report from local authorities, the fatal accident took place early in the morning on National Road 4 in Kampong Seila district when a cargo truck attempted to overtake another vehicle and collided head-on with a flat-bed truck carrying garment workers in the opposite lane.
Seng Sorina, acting police chief of the Kampong Seila district, confirmed that a driver and garment worker were pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital – while the other 24 workers, including 16 women, sustained both minor and major injuries.
Kampong Seila District Police are still searching for the cargo truck driver who fled the scene of the crash, according to Sorina.
“Technically, the accident was caused by a truck driving carelessly, then it hit a car that had garment workers,” he said, implying that the truck transporting the garment workers was not completely without fault since it was illegally modified.
Man Soth, 55, one of the garment workers who suffered head injuries from the crash, told CamboJA News that the cargo truck collided with the factory vehicle while it was stopped to pick up his colleagues, as it does every morning.
Soth’s son and daughter, who also work in factories within the Jejeang Gorji Special Economic Zone (SEZ), where the commuter truck was en route, sustained minor injuries. He is unsure if they will receive workers’ compensation.
“No one from the company [Jejeang Gorji SEZ ] has visited us, only provincial officers,” he said.
According to Heng Sophannarith, the Chairman of the Road Traffic Safety Working Group for Workers, traffic incidents involving ill-equipped transportation vehicles carrying factory workers have been a major concern for years.
In the first half of 2024, there were 6 incidents involving vehicles transporting workers to industrial parks, resulting in 174 injuries and one fatality, according to Sophannarith.
Currently, there are 3,332 vehicles registered as employee transport vehicles. More than half of these vehicles are suspected to be poorly maintained flat-bed trucks modified to carry passengers without seats, which is illegal, as noted by Sophannarith.
Illegally modified flatbed trucks have become common for transporting factory workers in Cambodia, sparking a 2022 campaign by NGOs and policymakers to replace them with buses.
“The reason [the amount of trucks still high] is because the truck drivers do not have enough money to upgrade their trucks, let alone buy a bus,” said Sophannarith
“But in the future [2027], we will arrange comfortable buses for the workers,” he said, noting that factory owners and companies in special economic zones must also contribute to ensuring the safety of their employees during their commute.
Yang Sophorn, president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, has urged the government to intervene and promote a transportation sector specifically for workers in the garment and manufacturing industries.
“From the beginning, unions have always suggested that the priority given to the ministry [of Labor and Vocational Training] is to improve the safety of workers,” said Sophorn.
In February 2024, the government began preparing a mechanism to encourage microfinance institutions and banks to provide low-interest loans to transport workers to encourage them to purchase buses.
Presently, the government acknowledges that the rate of transitioning from trucks to buses is only about 30 percent.
