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zones, a labor ministry delegate handles most labor conflicts, which tend
to be limited primarily to complaints about unpaid overtime. Neither
working conditions nor living conditions—in on-site dormitories, in which
hundreds of workers are packed into beds in perpetual rotation, paying
approximately $10 per month in the Bavet zone--are subjected to
inspections. Significantly, the dormitories are available free of charge to
firms.

The requirement that investors provide professional training
remains woefully deficient, and no clear authority is able to insist on of
the creation of training programs or centers. In effect, improving
workers’ professional skills is up to individual investors, and because
most jobs are unskilled, a few hours of on-site training is considered
adequate. Furthermore, because workers complaints about working
conditions are banned inside the zones, the occasional violent protests
take place outside the zones.

Deregulation and Social Violence

The first casualty of rampant social deregulation is public
infrastructure. The regional offices nominally required to ensure the
recruitment of workers for investors are ineffective, forcing employers to
resort to the local press or send representatives into the villages. Nor is
there any connection between water and electricity provided for the
zones and public utilities in surrounding regions, because investors are
not required to extend them beyond the confines of the zones. In fact,
the zone director at Bavet on the Vietnamese border imports electricity
from Vietnam, which is less expensive and more stable, a connection
that brings no benefit to nearby areas.

Gambling and other questionable commercial traffic that flourish
around the zones and the casinos near each of Cambodia’s and Laos’
special economic zones offer further evidence of the egregious side-
effects of unfettered deregulation. As a result, every city that hosts a
zone also contains one of these vast structures, which are modeled on
Las Vegas casinos, in which activities forbidden beyond Cambodia’s

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