Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

Around 60
policemen from around the country took part in a training workshop on
Thursday to help them combat illegal human trafficking.

The two-day training came as Cambodia approved a measure to tighten controls on Cambodian migrant laborers.

Cambodia is facing dual problems
of human trafficking and an increase in the number of laborers who
legally seek work abroad, some of whom have reported serious abuses as a
result.

Thursday’s training included a
closer look at the laws already on the books to prevent trafficking, as
well as further methods to prevent it.

“Fighting human trafficking has
many challenges and many activities,” said Chu Bun Eng, secretary of
state for the Ministry of Interior, who spoke at the opening of the
session. Not all of those activities are easily recognizable, she said.
“But we clearly see there is activity in bringing persons from one place
to another.”

The government has also issued a new subdecree to help control the flow of migrant laborers through recruitment agencies.

Such agencies have vastly
increased over the last year, seeking to bring in young women for
domestic labor in Malaysia, where demand is high. However, the agencies
are poorly regulated, and media reports have surfaced of young women
facing poor conditions at recruitment centers and suffering physical and
sexual abuse at the hands of employers in Malaysia.

The new regulation gives the
Ministry of Labor more control over such practices, with the aid of the
ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs.

Both the training and the new
measure were welcomed by rights workers as a step toward improving
enforcement of labor and anti-trafficking practices.

“We are still worried about the
human trafficking situation,” said Sawada Chan Krisna, who heads a
protection unit for women and children at the rights group Adhoc. The
group received 28 separate complaints of human trafficking so far this
year.

Ya Nuth, president of the Caram
Cambodia, a protection group, said they had received 20 different
complaints of human trafficking in the first seven months of 2011.

“The training of these
enforcement officers is a good thing to push the implementation of law
in reducing the human trafficking and it effects,” he said.