Bavet city governor suspected of shooting protesting Cambodian garment workers: Interior Minister

PHNOM PENH, March 1 (Xinhua) -- The Governor of Bavet city Chhouk Bundit is suspected of opening gunfire at Cambodian garment workers in a mass protest for salary increase on Feb. 20 and injured three female workers at that time, the Minister of Interior Sar Kheng said Thursday. 
"The police have already known the identity of the suspect--the governor of Bavet city Chhouk Bundit is the suspect in the shooting," he told reporters after a Southeast Asia Regional Workshop on Child Protection.
The Feb. 20's shooting happened at the Manhattan Special Economic Zone (SEZ) situated in Svay Rieng province's Bavet city when some 3,000 workers from three factories, namely Kingmaker Footwear, Kaoway Sports, and Sheico, were protesting for salary increase.
The three victims in the shooting are Buot Chenda, 21, who was shot on her chest and exited her back, and the two others are Keo Nea and Nuth Sakhorn, who were shot slightly injured.
The shooter with a pistol approached the protesting workers by a car and fired to them before he escaped into the nearby Acacia forest.
On Wednesday, the Interior Ministry sent the results of an investigation in the case of shooting protesting garment workers to the Svay Rieng provincial court and is awaiting an arrest warrant from the court. "The perpetrator will be arrested within a week after the court' s issuance of arrest warrant," said Sar Kheng.
Svay Rieng is located some 167 kilometers Southeast of Phnom Penh and bordered by Vietnam.
Garment industry is the country's largest income maker. The sector earned total revenues of 4.24 billion U.S. dollars last year, representing 87 percent of the country's total exports. The whole industry consisted of more than 300 factories, employing more than 300,000 people, mostly women from rural areas.
Low wages and poor working conditions have led to frequent strikes in this Southeast Asian nation. The minimum monthly wage for a worker is 66 U.S. dollars.