A spokesperson for the Justice Ministry and Cambodian Human Rights Committee hit back at criticism over lack of transparency about Covid-19 cases in the country’s prisons by turning the issue into a matter of privacy.
About 2,000 factory workers blocked National Road 6 over the weekend in Kampong Cham province, asking that they be given Covid-19 tests, be allowed to quarantine at home, and be paid 50 percent of their wages, according to provincial officials.
Through prison guards and unnamed NGOs, the wives and brother of three jailed dissidents have been told their imprisoned relatives have Covid-19, amid outbreaks in at least four of the nation’s prisons, the extent of which has not been revealed by the government.
Provinces outside Phnom Penh had more than 2,000 new Covid-19 cases in the week to Thursday, the most on record, as coronavirus numbers continue a gradual resurgence.
Afraid of getting locked down inside a bicycle factory, an estimated 2,000 workers fled out of rear entrances, overwhelmed a deputy governor asking them to stay, carried their motorbikes through a pond, and scattered.
Phnom Penh City Hall has designated parts of two villages in Pur Senchey and Russei Keo districts as “orange zones,” shutting down travel and businesses in a return to restrictions for a factory area and a dense urban neighborhood.
“Most people don’t even know we exist. We deal with Covid-19 all day every day and yet people just think of doctors when they think of frontline workers,” Nguon Sokheng says, smile vanishing. “Nobody asks where the waste goes.”
A prisons department spokesperson on Wednesday confirmed there were Covid-19 cases in Phnom Penh’s PJ prison but would not say how many, while the mother of a prisoner there said her daughter had heard of widespread transmission.
The Interior Ministry prisons department, Preah Sihanouk provincial administration and Phnom Penh City Hall this week would not offer clarification on a human rights group’s claim that there are “hundreds” of Covid-19 cases in the country’s prisons.
Some vendors spent Monday cleaning their stalls in anticipation of opening for sales on Tuesday, but amid persistent Covid-19 fears as well as precautions — which restrict reopenings to only sellers of essential foodstuffs — the return of market activity was a trickle rather than a rush.
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