More than 16,000 hectares of rice paddies are currently being affected by drought across the country, officials said yesterday. “There wasn’t enough rain for the rice this year, ” said Nhep Srorn, director of Takeo province’s agriculture department. Pich Sokhin, governor of Oddar Meanchey province, said ...

The seized property of fugitive former ambassador Nan Sy has so far failed to fetch bidders, denying state coffers some $400,000 embezzled by the disgraced official. The undeveloped 10 by 20 meter plot in Tuol Kork district was put up for auction last week in an effort to ...

A majority of small and medium enterprises in Cambodia were not registered, despite the advantages it offered to businesses, participants at a workshop on business registration procedure, intellectual property and business etiquette for women heard yesterday. Referring to 2011 statistics, Chan Sorey, vice-minister of the Ministry ...

Cambodian migrant workers at a tuna processing company in Thailand have had their passports confiscated by their employers and are effectively trapped in substandard work conditions, research released yesterday revealed. Non-profit research organisation Finnwatch said it had found a number of “problems” with working conditions at ...

Some 200 Koh Kong farmers locked in a long-running land dispute with two sugar plantations met Tuesday with a representative of the Thailand-based owners for the first time since the land dis­pute began in 2006. Khamrom Phochai, a Thai national and representative of Thai­land’s Khon Kaen ...

Rainfall during this year’s dry season and fewer farmers cultivating tobacco has resulted in a shortage of raw tobacco and a steep price increase, industry officials and farmers said yesterday. Tola Ponlu, head of corporate and regulatory affairs at British American Tobacco (BAT) in Phnom Penh, ...

Government officials met with more than 200 Phnom Penh families on Friday to lay out the state’s case for ownership of their land and the compensation they can expect when they are evicted from their homes situated along the city’s railway tracks. The $142 million project ...

An estimated 100 kg of fish were killed and about 1,000 villagers were told not to drink from a stream that was contaminated with 6 tons of an unknown chemical substance in Kompong Chhnang province on Tuesday night, police said. A truck carrying 22 containers of ...

After a two-year hiatus, the CamBuild, CamFood and CamHotel exhibitions are back at Diamond Island this week, starting on Wednesday and going through to Friday. Andrew Siow, director of the Kuala Lumpur-headquartered AMB Exhibitions, says the three industry shows at the same time should attract more ...

Seventy percent of all outbound parcels leaving Cambodia via the state-owned postal service contain local food products that are delivered to Cambodians living abroad, an official at Cambodia Post said yesterday. Ork Bora, general director of Cambodia Post, said that of the total 26,678 packages, not ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday charged one of its own clerks [Kruoch Borath] with breach of trust for taking $250,000 dollars that was paid to the clerk to facilitate a speedy trial without “problems,” officials said. [Another clerk for Judge Lim Meng] Mr. Khen ...

Minsk Tractor Works (MTZ trademark) will make a monetary contribution to the authorized capital of a private company Belarus-Mekong that is being set up in Cambodia. Upon the suggestion of the Industry Ministry of Belarus, the Belarusian company will transfer 32 million Cambodian riels (about ...

Military police in Preah Sihanouk province said yesterday that they impounded four trucks carrying retail goods worth about $1 million that a lieutenant general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces had imported from Thailand without paying tax duty. The unpaid import duty amounted to about ...

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said yesterday that it had still found no replacement donor to commit long-term to carrying on its work helping indigenous ethnic minority groups secure communal land titles once it pulls out in May. Kan Vibol, project field manager for CIDA’s ...

Access to finance could reduce violence, empower the most vulnerable in society and improve the livelihoods of Cambodia’s poorest people, a conference on community-led funding heard on Wednesday. Sarah Sitts, country manager of the international NGO Pact, introduced the funding model of savings-led micro-finance (SLMF). In ...

Violence broke out twice yesterday at the Maru Chuen garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Dangkor district – first, between police and strikers, and later, between strikers and employees who remained at work. In the morning, seven workers and one police officer were injured after police intervened ...

A community forest patrol group trying to fight the destruction of protected forest in Kratie province’s Snuol district have, for the second time in two weeks, seized equipment from those they accuse of illegal logging. About 100 people from Svay Chreah, Snuol, Sre Cha, Pi Thnou ...

The Court of Appeal yesterday heard the case of a land dispute between a 70-year old woman from Kompong Chhang province and a company owned by the wife of the Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy over a 3,000 square meter parcel of land. In May ...

When 46-year-old Than Thol got a $900 loan from Samic Microfinance last year, he took advantage of a little-known and  lengthily worded insurance program called Measure for Economic and Accelerated Development for All, or MEADA. MEADA provides coverage for families of mostly lower-income borrowers in the ...

The Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU) urged all apartment landlords to not increase their rent because garment and footwear employees get only a basic salary of $80 per month. A statement issued Monday said the wage increase from $61 per month to $80 will be implemented ...