CAMBODIA: Beer Firms Need to Do More for Women Promoters

KUALA LUMPUR - The panel discussions and debates at a recent regional conference here on sexual health were a world away from Chana and Sopheap’s daily environment – the din of music, clients’ chatter and unwanted advances at the restaurant where she works as a beer promoter in Cambodia.

   Beer promoters try to do just that – sell beer to patrons at the restaurant clad in short outfits, but making a living is not easy because majority are paid based on the amount of drinks they can sell each day.

   Their work also puts them in what activists, including those at the 3rd Asia-Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health from Nov 17-20, call a risky environment. Indeed, Channa herself says that she sometimes accepts money from male clients to have sex with them, because of the need to boost their income of about 55 U.S. dollars a month.

   “This job make me lose my dignity because the majority of clients abuse me,” the mother of two told a discussion here on reproductive and sexual health issues in Cambodia.

   “My colleagues and I have to face all these assaults. If not, we don’t have money to feed our families. My mother is too old and I have to be responsible for my brother who is still young,” Channa says, her voice breaking. Silence fell in the airconditioned hall as she spoke.

   Channa’s turning to selling sex is called indirect sex work, brought on by the kind of the environment they work in, the economic pressures they face. It is called ‘indirect’ because it is commercial sex that happens outside usual venues like brothel and includes karaoke lounge attendants.

   It also puts the beer promoters, usually aged 15 to 39, at risk of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS – in a country that already has a relatively high HIV prevalence rate among those aged 15 to 49 of 2.6 percent.

   The prevalence of HIV/AIDS among women aged 15 to 49 is even higher at 30 percent, according to 2003-04 figures of the Washington-based Population Research Bureau (PRB).

   Sophea, who has been working as a beer promoter for nine years and gets 58 dollars a month, says beer promoters are basically on their own.

   When harassment and abuse – including rude language and unwanted sexual touching -- happen in the bars and restaurants, she says they cannot ask even their bosses for assistance. “The boss doesn’t intervene to help beer promoter girls because he doesn’t want to lose clients. If we complain a lot about the client behaviour, about their harassment, the client will not take our beer anymore,” Sophea explained.

   There are an estimated 4,000 women who do beer promotion for what are mostly foreign beer brands – and the sight of these women selling and serving drinks of the brand they push -- has become a common one in Cambodia.
 
   Stories about how a good number are getting HIV/AIDS are also increasingly common, activists who work on reproductive health say. According to national research in 1998, every year around 20 percent of beer promotion girls become HIV-positive.

   Srilakshmi Ganapathi of the National Universtiy of Singapore, who did research on beer-selling women in Siem Reap province – a popular tourist destination because of the Angkor Wat temple complex, adds that the women beer promoters work at night, 27 days a month. But the money they make is small compared to the income they each bring in to their beer companies -- 2,000 dollars a month.

   “Beer selling women have to face risks to her health,” Ganapathi explained. “They have to consume unsafe quantifies of alcohol on the job, around 1.23 litres nightly.”

   “To meet family economic obligations, some accept propositions to exchange sex for money after work from clients with whom they are often forced to drink with,” Ganapathi  added. This leads to other health risks. “This reduces condom use and increases the risks of HIV/AIDS, STI and other health problems.”

    The beer promoters living with HIV/AIDS also may not live long because their employers – the beer companies -- don’t pay much attention to their health or give them health insurance. They also cannot easily get access to anti-retroviral drugs.

   “Those companies try to avoid their responsibilities toward the beer girls’ health and salaries,” said Ian Lubek of the University of Guelph in Canada who has done research on the issue in Siem Reap.

“Because payment for part-time job does not exist in Cambodian labour law, these western (beer) companies consider the beer promotion girls as being part of the advertisement for their product -- but not employees,” Lubek said. “So they can’t get any health insurance covered by the company.”

   He says more pressure must be brought on the foreign beer companies to become more responsible employers.

   Already, companies like Heineken has responded to pressure by getting their promoters to wear less-revealing, and longer uniforms. Reports also say it has arranged to bring women beer promoters home at night.

   Groups like CARE International also hope that more brands follow and that the private sector will work toward an industry-wide code of conduct for promoters and beer outlet owners.

   Media reports also say that four beer companies have put in place attempts to improve working conditions, by holding training programmes that touch on responsible drinking and ways to deal with aggressive clients.

   “We have to do something to against the beer companies that don’t respect the beer-selling women rights, by asking them to respect the labour law and commercial law,” Lubek added.

   Some beer promoters and activists also increasingly question the use of terms like ‘beer promoters’ and ‘indirect sex work’ because their connotation as sex workers.
(END/IPS/AP/JS/05)