ASEAN’s Flow of Professional Workers: Challenges and Solutions for Cambodia

The challenges and solutions for Cambodia from the free flow of skilled labor in the ASEAN Economic Community has been a heated topic argued among Cambodians, people in charge of skilled workers, learners and professionals, as Cambodia managed himself joining the ASEAN Economic Community at the starting of 2016. In order to understand the challenges and solutions more in detail, a study was conducted; it employed a quantitative approach, and it was conducted with a questionnaire delivered directly to 396 students who were pursuing their studies from associate’s degrees to Doctoral degrees at five different universities in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. As the results, a descriptive statistical analysis in the Statistical Package for the Social Science, version 23.0, showed that there were challenges for Cambodia, indicated by 75 per cent of respondents thought that the country lacked skilled workers to challenge the ASEAN’s professionals. 70 per cent of participants considered the inflow of foreign skilled labor as a threat to local jobs seekers, while 81 per cent of respondents supported the statement “the imbalanced agreement implementation on skilled labor in ASEAN is another barrier in ASEAN’s jobs finding for Cambodian skilled workers”. Toward the solutions to reduce the challenges and to better the chances for Cambodians, significant suggestions have been shared; firstly, education reform, further vocations and trainings for Cambodians should be better improved. Secondly, creating more local jobs should be further done and thirdly, Cambodian skilled workers should improve their knowledge of the English language, as it is very important in Cambodia, ASEAN and the world in pursuing their present and future’s studies and works.