Forty-one Vietnamese citizens escaped a casino in Cambodia and swam across a river to return to Vietnam due to overwork, unpaid jobs, Colonel Le Tan Hoa, a police chief in An Giang Province, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Thursday.

Police in An Phu District, An Giang, which borders Cambodia, are detaining 40 of them at the local police station while the remaining Vietnamese national lost contact with his peers during their swim across the Binh Di River and has remained unaccounted for. 

Nine of the detainees were slightly injured and have received treatment from local medical workers.

Colonel Hoa said he is awaiting an order from his superiors to handle the illicit returnees and his team is searching for the missing one.

Border guard officers discovered the 40 border jumpers, including 35 men and five women, near the Long Binh border guard station at around 9:45 am on Thursday.

The group of unlawful returnees said they fled from a casino in Sampeou Pou Commune, Kaoh Thom District, located in the Cambodian province of Kandal.

Their jobs at the casino involved monitoring online games.

They were unpaid despite working overtime to the extent that they were not allowed to rest.

After planning, they took advantage of an opportunity to run to the casino gate and swim across the Binh Di River, which is a natural borderline between Vietnam and Cambodia, in order to enter Vietnam.

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