Troubling contrasts in ASEAN
Some of these ASEAN economies are not like the others. Singapore is 80 times richer than Myanmar and its population lives 20 years longer than Cambodia’s, while Myanmar ranks 50 places behind Cambodia in terms of global competitiveness, according to a wide-ranging analysis from the World ...
Joe Freeman
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/troubling-contrasts-asean
Slums in capital decried
Unicef during a discussion yesterday pressured the Phnom Penh Municipality to develop a plan to eradicate slums in the capital, but government officials offered no quick fixes. According to the municipality, there are 281 slum communities in the capital, which 2,033 families call home. Earlier this month, ...
Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/slums-capital-decried
Bandith lawyer ‘in dark’
The lawyer of wanted fugitive Chhouk Bandith yesterday said key witnesses had not been summonsed to an appeal hearing of the sentencing of the powerful former Bavet town governor, scheduled for Thursday. Defence lawyer Sun Bannarith told the Post he had found out about the hearing from the ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/bandith-lawyer-%E2%80%98-dark%E2%80%99
Students in safety protest
More than 500 students and teachers from two high schools in Banteay Meanchey province’s Sisophon district took to the streets on Friday demanding better safety around schools after a truck crashed into a rice mill near one of the schools, injuring a man. The students and ...
Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/students-safety-protest
Collusion alleged in logging
Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district have accused border officials of not only allowing illegal Vietnamese loggers to cross the border unimpeded, but also of taking their side in negotiations with a community forest patrol. Members of the patrol in Paknhai commune’s Lam village said ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/collusion-alleged-logging
Union bosses called in
Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday summonsed three senior leaders of Cambodia’s largest independent garment union for questioning over claims they embezzled money meant to be paid to workers in compensation following an industrial dispute, a court official has said. ...
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/union-bosses-called
Factory shutters in shame
The Zongtex Garment factory off Phnom Penh’s Russian Boulevard looks like a nondescript residential compound, hidden down a dead-end road. There are no signs suggesting that it supplied to some of the world’s leading high street names – and the US military. Taiwanese-owned Zongtex Garment Manufacturing ...
Daniel Pye, Alice Cuddy and Chhay Channyda
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/factory-shutters-shame
Deadlock longest in history
Deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha yesterday asked Prime Minister Hun Sen to show more flexibility in negotiations in order to break the political deadlock. His request comes at a symbolic juncture: The political impasse following last July’s national election has now become the longest ever since ...
Meas Sokchea and Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/deadlock-longest-history
Chainsaws snatched in Mondulkiri
Mondulkiri villagers seized seven chainsaws on Tuesday from illegal loggers claiming to be selling timber to logging tycoon Try Pheap’s company. A group of ethnic Pnong villagers came across the three illegal loggers during a patrol of their community forest on Tuesday, according to Bil Vanthy, ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/chainsaws-snatched-mondulkiri
Firm ‘logging in sanctuary’
A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/firm-%E2%80%98logging-sanctuary%E2%80%99
Forecast: coast in danger
Residents along Cambodia’s coastline may want to relocate to higher ground in the wake of a climate-change assessment that predicts much of the Kingdom’s coast could be submerged by rising sea levels. Based on predictive models that take into account global temperature trends and melting ice ...
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/forecast-coast-danger
Friends in high places
A Chinese developer with a “family-like” relationship to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit has accelerated construction at its $5 billion resort – ostensibly cancelled by royal decree in 2010 – in a protected national park in Preah Sihanouk province. The 3,300-hectare Golden Silver Gulf resort ...
Daniel Pye and May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/friends-high-places
Maids ‘abused’ in Singapore
At least three Cambodians who have travelled to work as maids in Singapore since August last year as part of a pilot scheme have complained to worker welfare groups there about employer abuse and poor working conditions, including molestation and the slapping of a worker. In ...
Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/maids-%E2%80%98abused%E2%80%99-singapore
Arrest in UN murder
Police on Tuesday night arrested a 35-year-old man they say confessed to the murder of Dutch national Daphna Beerdsen and the brutal attack on her 19-month-old daughter in a burglary gone awry at their home just off Norodom Boulevard on Monday. National Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith ...
Vong Sokheng
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/arrest-un-murder
Orphanage director in court
American national and orphanage director Daniel Stephen Johnson was tried on Friday at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on charges that he sexually abused five boys last year. The court heard that Johnson, 36, the director of the Hope Transitions Christian orphanage in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey ...
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
https://cambodia.opendevelopmentmekong.net/wp-admin/post.php?post=51030&action=edit
Construction raking in cash
Foreign and domestic investment in construction projects skyrocketed in the first four months of the year, government data suggests. Ministry of Land Management and Urban Planning data revealed last week shows total investment in new construction projects reached more than $1.4 billion at the end of ...
May Kunmakara and Sum Manet
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/construction-raking-cash
Cracks discovered in bridge
The Ministry of Public Works and Transportation (MPWT) and the Phnom Penh municipality are preparing a ban on heavy trucks crossing the Cambodian-Japanese Friendship Bridge after cracks were discovered in a pillar on the bridge’s eastern end, a City Hall official confirmed yesterday. At a meeting ...
Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/cracks-discovered-bridge
Phnong rally in Mondulkiri
About 200 ethnic Phnong villagers gathered in Mondulkiri province’s Bousraa commune yesterday to protest against several companies that hold economic land concessions in the area, which they say are destroying their traditional livelihoods. The villagers from Pech Chreada district accused the Kau Su Dak Lak Company ...
Chhay Channyda
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/phnong-rally-mondulkiri
World Bank in spotlight
As the World Bank considers supplying fresh loans to Cambodia, a new study uses the country as exhibit A for how the financier effectively sponsors corporate land grabs at the expense of the rural poor it purportedly helps. Three years ago, the bank’s own inspectors found ...
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/world-bank-spotlight
Vote held in contempt
The National Assembly yesterday appointed a ruling Cambodian People’s Party stalwart to fill the final seat of the judicial body that oversees the Kingdom’s judges and prosecutors and whose political independence is already a target of criticism. A majority of 66 parliamentarians voted Ith Rady, an ...
Meas Sokchea and Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/vote-held-contempt