Cambodia garment worker deaths renew pressure on safer transport

The deadliest part of Cambodia’s garment supply chain was not inside a sewing room or a cutting floor. It was the ride home. In one crash in Kampong Chhnang province, a heavy cargo truck slammed into an open-top truck carrying garment workers and killed nine people, injuring 53. In Svay Rieng province, a bus carrying workers overturned and killed five more, with 40 injured.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training said it was deeply shocked and urged strict compliance with traffic laws after the May 23 crashes. Civil society groups and trade union federations were less interested in shock than in the pattern underneath it. They said these were not isolated disasters but part of a long-running safety failure that has left commuting workers exposed to dangerous vehicles, poor oversight and costs that the industry keeps pushing out of sight.

That blind spot matters because Cambodia’s garment sector is huge, export-driven and still stitched into global fashion’s basic math. It employs an estimated 800,000 to 1 million people in about 1,900 factories, generated more than $15.5 billion in exports last year and pays many workers only about $200 to $300 a month, including overtime. At that level, cheap transport is not a perk. It is a necessity. Flatbed trucks remain common, and they often have no seats or benches, which means workers stand, brace and ride exposed, sometimes packed onto vehicles that were never meant for people at all.

The International Labour Organization said road safety for commuting workers is a major public health concern and that the fix has to be systemic, from tougher regulatory enforcement to better safety behavior by transport providers and commuters. That is the right frame, because the problem is not a one-off crash. ANROEV says open-top trucks and flatbeds have been used to move garment workers for decades. Its records point to 2014, when 73 workers died and 789 were seriously injured during commutes, and to a May 2015 crash that killed 19 workers and injured 20.

Cambodia’s National Social Security Fund said in May 2024 it planned to phase out flatbed trucks for garment-worker transport by 2027 and replace them with buses. After these latest deaths, that deadline suddenly looks too slow. The pressure now is on brands, employers and authorities to treat worker transport as part of duty of care, not an afterthought, with vehicle standards, inspections, licensing, driver training and co-funded buses built into the system before another commute turns fatal.