Lon Vanna has been working around the clock for months but she doesn’t sew clothes anymore – she guards the machines in the abandoned garment factory in Cambodia where she once worked.
Vanna believes the sewing machines are her only hope for saving her home and land, which she put up as collateral for a loan to feed herself and her ailing parents after the new coronavirus pandemic shuttered the factory in March.
“Those machines are my money; they are my life,” Vanna said, pledging to hold them hostage until she receives about $2,000 in wages and bonuses owed since bosses shut the factory, some 50km south of the capital, Phnom Penh, unannounced.
