Eighteen garment workers were sent to the hospital on Wednesday when the truck they were riding to work overturned in Kompong Speu province after its two back tires blew out, according to police, who arrested the driver.
It was the latest accident involving garment workers, who face a notoriously dangerous commute to and from work on privately owned trucks that flout the country’s traffic laws with near impunity.
Khim Samon, the police chief in Odong district, said the truck was overloaded—carrying 65 passengers—and speeding along Road 44 when both back tires blew out and it toppled onto its side at 6:13 a.m.
He said 18 of the passengers were sent to hospitals in Phnom Penh.
“Most of them hit their heads and bodies,” he said of the 18. “The others who were less injured were sent for treatment at health centers in the area of the accident.”
“The truck was confiscated, and the driver, Chheng Bunroeun, 24, was arrested immediately,” he said. “The driver was driving carelessly, and he was carrying too many people. I think the driver must be held responsible for compensating the victims.”
Mr. Samon said the road did not have an official speed limit but that Mr. Bunroeun was driving at about 80 km per hour when he should have been going no more than 50.
Puth Dy, one of the passengers, said she hit the road when the truck fell over and was being treated at a clinic for bruises to her head and body. “All I know is that the truck was going very fast and the driver was overtaking another car at the time that the back tires went flat,” she said.
A doctor at Calmette Hospital who declined to give her name said the emergency ward received nine of the victims and that the most severe injury was a broken hand.
Mann Senghak, an adviser to the Free Trade Union, which represents some of the workers at the factories where the truck was headed, blamed the accident not only on the driver but on authorities—for failing to enforce the law.
“Year after year, I have never seen any good measures from the government to control the truck drivers who drive the garment workers because they let the drivers get away,” he said. “We urge the authorities to enforce the new traffic law. If someone commits a crime, the police must punish them.”
Provincial police officials in Kompong Speu declined to comment on Wednesday. Mr. Samon, the district police chief, said his officers regularly urged drivers not to overload their trucks but refused to say whether any of them were ever fined or arrested for violations.
The new Land Traffic Law, which came into force in January, states that passenger vehicles should not transport more people than there are available seats, “as determined by the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation.”
The vast majority of the trucks in which the country’s roughly 600,000 garment workers ride to and from work, however, do not have seats, forcing occupants to stand on the beds cheek to jowl, often with little to hold on to. Most of the drivers are unlicensed.
