An Indian manager of a joint Indian-Vietnamese sugarcane plantation in Kratie province was arrested on Thursday following a complaint from employees over unpaid wages, officials said.
Lakshmana Peromal Niagappal, 50, a manager for Kamadhenu Ventures Cambodia, was arrested at the company’s office in Sambor district in the morning and sent to the Kratie Provincial Court for questioning, said Kun Sophoan, chief of the provincial police’s minor crimes bureau.
“The arrest was made following a court warrant because the workers accused him of owing them two years of wages,” he said.
Mr. Sophoan said the seven employees filed their complaint with the court on December 9, claiming a total of $31,000 in unpaid wages.
Hak Hoan, a deputy prosecutor at the provincial court, said he had received the manager, but had postponed questioning.
“We are not questioning him today because a Khmer lawyer for the Indian national called me to say they would arrive in the late afternoon,” he said.
“We will release him on bail if he deposits the money with the court, and we will use the money to pay the workers,” Mr. Hoan said, apparently presuming the manager’s guilt before the court had even questioned him.
Mr. Hoan said a second group of people had also filed a complaint against Kamadhenu Ventures, accusing the company of failing to pay them for the use of their tractors. He said he did not have the details of the case on hand.
Representatives of Kamadhenu Ventures could not be reached for comment. Mr. Niagappal’s lawyer, Soum Chamrong, declined to comment.
The company has faced similar complaints before. In June 2013, just one month after the site’s inauguration, 250 workers blocked a road leading to the factory in protest over two weeks’ unpaid wages.
A report published online that year by state-owned news service Voice of Vietnam said Kamadhenu Ventures would use its sugarcane to produce 3,500 tons of sugar and 30,000 liters of ethanol per year.
“The factory, considered as one of the largest foreign-invested projects in Cambodia, has a total investment of around US$90.7 million, including US$25.3 million from [Kamadhenu Ventures] and US$65.4 million from the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam,” the report said.
Following the inauguration, Kratie provincial governor Sar Chamrong said the facility would provide jobs for about 600 Cambodians.
Sambor district governor Sum Sarith, however, said on Thursday that most work at the site had been on hold for the past year, following a factory fire.
“The company suspended production activity for a year already because there is no cane to use for production. But the company is not closed completely because we have seen some Khmer people working at the factory,” he said.
