After the establishment in August 1999 the needs of skilled sewers have been responded by the Cambodian Garment Training Center (CGTC) and thousand of trainees have finished their training and got the jobs at garment factories that currently employ around 280,000 people. Human Resource Development through skills training such as Sewing Operator, Production Supervisor, Quality Control, and Mechanics has been designed to meet the members’ needs.
Sewing Operator – Training the unskilled persons, mainly youth from rural areas for them 
to be ready to take up the job in the garment factories. Totally 49 courses were conducted with1, 392 trainees, 99% of them were recruited as sewing operators in GMAC member factories. As part of our socials assistance to poor and disability people, CGTC offered scholarship to 39 youth from Kep town and 40 HIV/AIDS workers working in Modern Dress Sewing Factory (MDSF) to equip them with skills so that they can work to get income to support their family.
Sewing Operator course takes two weeks to complete.
Production Supervisor – The focus is to upgrade the existing workers in garment factories to become line leaders or supervisors. These levels are mostly controlled by the Chinese to whom investors pay higher wage. Some 53 courses were conducted in which 1,144 workers had completed the training. Approximately 80% of sewing workers who had completed their training promoted to be line leaders. For 30% of line leaders who received supervisor training became production supervisors. This promotion has helped factories in cutting cost of foreign supervisor employment.
Quality Control – CGTC has conducted 7 QC courses and 191 trainees (from factories) got
trained. After the training, each QC trainee know how to measures, evaluate the quality, know how to avoid mistakes (being rejected) and defect settlement.
Mechanics – 141 trainees (from factories and public) participated in 5 mechanics courses and had successfully completed the training. The training aimed at providing how to repair modern machines. Juki Corporation through Cambodia’s office provided mechanics specialists and training materials during the training.
Follow up with Trainees - Besides in-class training, trainers always go down to factories to follow up with trainees to see if the skills taught been correctly used and how effective they are. Should weakness found within trainees, an additional technical support helped.
Recently CGTC works with ASEAN Competitiveness Enhancement (ACE) by having cooperation from the ASEAN Federation of Textile Industry (AFTEX) under the project called ASEAN-ACE initiate the ASEAN Common Competency Program (ACCP), CGTC has been selected to be the Testing Center. The first testing was conducted on 22nd May 2010 on “Sewing Machine Operator”. There were 17 candidates from 7 factories and public.
Garment factories need the training center to help with HRD training activities, skills testing, and needs of capacity building of Cambodian people who are currently working in the garment industry to cope up with the new development and technologies.
Phnom Penh, July 7, 2010
By Ly Tek Heng
