Desperation is growing among foreign workers still unable to leave Cambodia after being freed from the country’s scam compounds.
In January, authorities arrested and deported politically-connected businessman Chen Zhi, the chair of Prince Group, who is accused of being one of the major players behind the scam industry that boomed in Cambodia.
Tens of thousands of foreign workers lived and worked in compounds across the country carrying out global online scams. Many of the workers have testified that they were trapped on the compounds, bought and sold between businesses, and forced to work under threat of violence. Many have said they were promised high-paying jobs but not told they would be scamming people.
Since January, many compounds have emptied out as police began raids on well-known scam areas.
In recent months, 8,000 foreign nationals have been processed for deportation and 210,000 others have left the country voluntarily, according to the government news agency AKP. But it’s been a long and slow process for some workers who came out of the scam compounds with little.
“Now we are in a bad situation. We don’t know what to do next. All we are requesting is to let us out of this country,” said an Ugandan worker outside the immigration department building near Phnom Penh’s old airport on Wednesday.
“Because we are starving. We eat once in a day. We have been feeding on bread, like one slice, two slices a day.”
In January, crowds of workers were camped outside the Chinese and Indonesian embassies, looking for help to get out. Phnom Penh’s riverside has lately been busy with foreign workers who have few places to go.
Last week, Phnom Penh’s quarantine center was guarded by immigration department officials as they hinted that the facilities were full. CamboJA News has reported that a former scam compound near the new airport was being used to hold foreign workers. Two journalists were arrested last week for reporting it was still a scam center. It was also the site of a complaint from police officers accusing their boss of taking $5,000 from scam operations.
Ugandan workers this week shared documentation from their high commission in Kuala Lumpur that listed hundreds of its citizens stuck in Cambodia, asking for assistance from the Cambodian foreign ministry. The workers also shared replies from the Cambodian Foreign Affairs and Interior ministries dated last week that agreed to help the trafficked workers.
The major issue has been visa overstay fines. Many workers arrived over a year ago, and never received visa renewals. At $10 a day, they now face thousands of dollars in fines to leave the country.
“We are asking them to forgive us for overstay fees, because we are victims of human trafficking,” said a 21-year-old Ugandan man at the immigration department.
An official process appeared to be underway, but it was slow, and confusing, he said.
Cambodia’s Interior Ministry could waive the overstay fines, and then the Immigration Department within the ministry could issue an exit permit. But some of the foreign workers said they had been back and forth between various offices and were still left waiting.
One worker recalled his nightmarish experience in scam compounds.
“I realized that I was in hell after having worked for some time,” he said. He was told he couldn’t leave unless he paid his employers $5,000. He had been promised $1,000 a month but received a fraction of that each month. He and his colleagues had been beaten, handcuffed and tortured, he said.
“After that we realized that we have to be down to work for them for free, whether you like it or not to save our lives,” the worker said. “They make you sign on the paper that you are being paid. If you do not sign the paper, they use electric shocks.”
He was now sleeping in a room with 15 others who were stuck just as he was.
“Why don’t the police arrest us, because if the police came and arrested us, we would have somewhere to sleep and have shelter and have something to eat?”
“I regret that I did the interview in Africa, I regret that I did the interview on the internet, I regret why I came this way.”
At the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration office last week, a 25-year-old Ugandan man, who like the others declined to be named due to fears that speaking out could affect his prospects of leaving Cambodia, said he had come to IOM hoping the global agency could intervene.
“I have no money so I’ve come here looking for shelter,” he said. “But they say there’s no shelter [space].”
IOM did not respond to questions about what it was doing to help the workers. Uganda’s High Commission in Malaysia has been approached for comment, and this article will be updated with any response. Immigration Department spokesman Sok Someakhea could not be reached.
The crush of demand for assistance was also affecting foreigners who hadn’t been working scams. A 37-year-old Ghanaian single mother at the IOM office said she had worked as an English teacher in Phnom Penh but fell behind on visa renewals when she gave birth to twins in October 2024 amid hospital bills and complications. Once her visa lapsed, she could no longer get a job, and she couldn’t pay her fines to leave the country either. She had also been told there was no space in shelters and little help available.
An exception to foreign workers asking for anonymity was a Ugandan man who gave his name as Tumwebaze Franca. He said on Wednesday outside the Immigration Department that he wanted to record a video pleading for help from his government.
He had arrived not realizing the nature of the work, survived a year of being mistreated, and now had to sleep on Phnom Penh streets.
“It’s now over one month,” he said. “We are starving. We have no food, we have no [place to] sleep, our colleagues are sick, we are sleeping on the streets, so we really need your help.”