UN: Worsening hunger affecting 821M people
Some jobs off limits to foreigners from August
BEGINNING from the second week of August, foreigners will be banned from driving taxis and tuk-tuks, as well as being motorcycle delivery drivers, street food vendors, hairdressers and product distributors among other lowerincome jobs.
Some white-collar jobs such as the head of human resources will also be off-limits to foreigners, as will certain positions in the private sector.
The move serves to protect the local employment market, the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training announced on Tuesday, saying most of the jobs non-Cambodians will be prohibited from doing are based in the informal economy.
Ministry spokesman Heng Sour told The Post on Tuesday t hat t he decision wi l l protect sma l l enter pr ises a nd fa mily-ow ned businesses.
“We are protecting small and MORE than 821 million people suffered f rom hunger worldw ide la st year, the UN reported on Monday – t he t h i rd yea r i n a row t hat t he number has risen.
After decades of decline, malnutrition began to increase in 2015, mainly because of climate change and war. Reversing the trend is one of the 2030 targets of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which aim to improve the planet and its people.
But getting to a world where no one is suffering from hunger by then remains an “immense challenge”, the report said, noting the number of people without enough to eat had risen from 811 million in 2017.
“We will not achieve zero hunger by 2030,” said David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme, one of the UN agencies contributing to the report.
“That’s a bad trend. Without food security we will never have peace and stability,” said Beasley, deploring that the media carry more talk about Brexit and Donald Trump than children dying of hunger.
He warned that extremist groups were using hunger and control over food supplies as a weapon to div ide c om mun it ie s or t o r e c r u it ne w members.
T he State of Food Securit y and Nutrition in the World report was produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisat ion (FAO) a nd ot her UN agencies i nclud i ng t he World Health Organisation ( WHO).
“To safeguard food security and nutrition, it is critical to already have in place economic and social policies to counteract the effects of adverse economic cycles when they arrive, while avoiding cuts in essential services, such as healthcare and education, at all costs,” it said.
A “structural transformation” was needed to include the poorest people in the world, the authors said. This would require “integrating food security and nutrition concerns into poverty reduction efforts” while tackling gender inequality and the exclusion of
family-run enterprises and employment in certain areas. At this juncture, Cambodia has to identify some jobs that foreigners are not allowed to do,” Sour said, adding that other countries have similar laws.
He said: “Most of the jobs that foreigners will be banned from doing are in the informal sector, such as vendors selling food on the street or on carts, or being taxi drivers or motodops. These are jobs Cambodians can do, and we are prohibiting foreigners from doing them.”
Cambodia, li ke ot her countries, a llows foreigners under nationa l and internationa l laws to invest and open businesses if they have been issued investment l icences or business permits by t he aut horities.
They also need employment visas and work permits to work in the Kingdom.
Legal expert Sok Sam Oeun told The Post on Tuesday that banning foreigners from certain employment was a positive move as more, particularly Chinese nationals, were moving to Cambodia and taking jobs from the locals.
He said loopholes i n t he law prohibiting foreigners from ta k ing certain jobs had allowed t hem to open any business they wished.
Sam Oeun said the government should increase taxes on foreigners and see they are properly controlled.
“I think if foreig ners are employed, they should be ta xed more than Cambodians. In some employment areas, we can lose advantages,” Sam Oeun said.
He said the government’s systems to monitor and control foreigners was still proving ineffective.
According to the Labour Law and recent prakas on foreign workers, only 10 per cent of the workforce of Cambodian enterprises, including factories, can be foreign, with these usually employed in specialist roles.
The law instructed businesses to give priority to Cambodians in certain positions.
Sour said foreigners working in Cambodia must pay $180 for a one-year visa, and they also require a work permit costing around $130 per year.
Employers were required to pay around $50 a year for each foreign staffer, who also contributes about $360 per year to the national budget, he said.
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