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# The recruitment fees no one will admit to charging
- URL: https://riel-media.com/en/news/the-recruitment-fees-no-one-will-admit-to-charging-en/
- Published: 2026-08-21T02:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-31T10:01:30.000Z
- Description: Workers leaving for Thailand describe paying up to $700 for jobs advertised as free.
- Author: Melissa Chenda
- Tags: News, #lang-en, #pair-recruitment-fees, #demo-content, Labour

The barges arrive after dark. From the bank at Prek Ambel you hear them before you see them — a low diesel hum, then the slap of a suction pipe hitting water.

Cambodia banned commercial sand dredging on this stretch of the Mekong in September 2024, three months after the river took twelve houses in a single night. Two years on, RielMedia counted nine barges working the same reach across six nights in August, and tracked two of them to a licence issued in a neighbouring district.

Villagers say the erosion never stopped. Satellite imagery reviewed for this story shows the bank at Prek Ambel retreating a further eleven metres between March and July.

> “We were told the river would rest. The river has not rested.”Chan Sokhun, village chief, Prek Ambel