Asian casino operator, NagaCorp Limited, has reportedly issued a statement to refute earlier press claims that it had granted significant pay rises to workers at its giant NagaWorld property so as to avert further industrial action.

According to reports from Inside Asian Gaming and GGRAsia, the Hong Kong-listed firm was said to have given employees at the Cambodian property salary increases of between 18% and 30% after some 3,000 staged a protest on Thursday. The workers were purportedly angry that the starting monthly wage is just $150 despite NagaCorp recently chalking up a 20% swell year-on-year in nine-month gross gaming revenues to $1.29 billion.

Contested claim:

However, NagaCorp Limited reportedly used an official filing to declare that operations at NagaWorld had ‘remained normal’ during the Thursday protest and that ‘all the employees who participated in the illegal strike had returned to work on January 12 without any wage increases.’

Obvious omission:

GGRAsia reported that the statement from NagaCorp also did not mention whether the company had acquiesced to staff demands by reinstating local union representative Chhim Sithar. The NagaWorld employee purportedly serves as President for the NagaWorld Union and was suspended in September for allegedly attempting to organize a campaign for higher wages.

Supplementary recruits:

Instead, the filing from NagaCorp is reported to have stated that NagaWorld possesses a ‘strong workforce of approximately 8,200 employees’ in Phnom Penh and that the Cambodian property had ‘recently hired about 1,000 trainees as part of a new executive trainee program’ in order ‘to provide additional labor capital to the operations of the group.’

Legal likelihood:

Inside Asian Gaming reported that NagaCorp issued a filing on Wednesday in which it proclaimed that the Phnom Penh Municipal Court had defined the impending NagaWorld protest as ‘an illegal strike’ and classed any participation as ‘a grave offence.’ The firm subsequently additionally pronounced that the Phnom Penh Court of First Instance is now due to investigate the industrial action and will be taking ‘the necessary legal action against employees who were involved in such an illegal strike for violating the court injunction.’