For years, thousands of young Cambodian girls who have been selling beer for the large international breweries have been putting up with violence, sexual harassment, forced drinking, and even rape on the job. As previously reported by ScandAsia, several international NGO’s in Cambodia have been accusing the large brewing companies – including the Danish beer giant Carlsberg – of not doing enough to protect these girls from the work-related abuse.
Now, it would seem that the criticism is producing action. In an attempt to improve the poor working conditions of the Cambodian beer girls, the three largest international beer companies in Cambodia – Carlsberg, Heineken, and Guinness – signed an agreement Friday, which is meant to protect the girls.
“Already when we entered Cambodia last summer, we knew that there was a problem with the beer girls, and we have been working on solving it ever since,” Carlsberg’s head of information, Jens Peter Skaarup, tells Danish news agency Ritzau.
Carlsberg owns half of the Cambodian brewery Cambrew and currently employs 750 beer girls in the capitol of Phnom Penh.
