Ministries and other national bodies

Interior Minister Sar Kheng has been paying traffic officers daily bonuses directly from his own pocket since January 1, information he revealed on Friday at a ministerial meeting on the transparent disbursement of traffic fine revenue, officials said yesterday.   ...

The Ministry of Public Works and Transport has set up a checkpoint with a vehicle scale at the eastern entrance to Tsubasa Bridge on Friday, after an overloaded rice truck damaged the bridge’s pavement last week. ...

A 10th century stone carving of the Hindu deity Rama, the last remaining statue from the Koh Ker temple complex that had been on public display outside Cambodia, was returned to Phnom Penh last week, officials confirmed on Sunday.   ...

The number of construction sites without permits rose almost 40 percent in the capital last year, with officials and realtors putting this down to a lack of understanding of regulations. ...

Human trafficking out of Cambodia is on the rise, according to an Interior Ministry report released on Thursday, and is being fueled by relaxed border controls and economic disparity in the region, according to a separate U.N. report.    ...

Vietnamese officials have requested Cambodian peacekeepers help train Vietnamese forces in preparation for additional training the Vietnamese military will receive from the United Nations. ...

The National Committee on Combating Human Trafficking released its annual report yesterday, with figures showing an improved effort by authorities since 2014 to crackdown on the trade. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen unleashed a tirade against underperforming government officials in a pair of speeches yesterday – musing aloud about reshuffling his Council of Ministers and wondering why rockets had not yet been deployed in the Kingdom’s recent “crackdown” on illegal logging. ...

Two Cambodian women will return home tomorrow after spending almost two years each living in China with abusive husbands, officials said yesterday.. ...

The Interior Ministry yesterday called for Beijing’s cooperation in tackling a ring of Chinese methamphetamine traffickers operating in Cambodia, one day after an annual Interior Ministry report announced that the number of drug busts in 2015 had more than doubled compared to 2014. ...

The National Bank of Cambodia is hosting the National Summit on the Development of the Microfinance Sector in Cambodia next month, marking a decade since the government announced that 2006 was the “Year of Microfinance.” ...

Cambodia’s modest navy is ap­parently a point of sensitivity for its commander, who on Wednesday said he would seek to acquire two warships from China to prevent neigh­boring countries from “looking down” on his fleet. ...

Cambodia on Monday received $124,000 worth of resources from South Korea to speed up the process of restoring ancient artefacts.   ...

In order to aid waterway transport, sand-dredging – largely banned since a 2011 decree – will soon begin reappearing at dozens of locations along the Tonle Bassac river, a spokesman from the Ministry of Mines and Energy confirmed yesterday. ...

The Ministry of Health has appealed to the public to protect itself from the H1N1 swine flu virus in a video posted on Facebook yesterday. ...

A Cambodian Monk in South Korea alleged that there are some officials in the Foreign and Interior Ministries illegally issuing service passports for Cambodian migrants in order to work in South Korea, according to video footage posted by a local media outlet on Monday. The ...

Cambodia passed a key Millennium Development Goal milestone last year with half of rural areas now having access to clean drinking water, according to a Ministry of Rural Development annual report released yesterday. ...

Reported rape cases increased by 12 percent last year compared to 2014, despite an overall drop in crime in 2015, according to an Interior Ministry report released on Tuesday. ...

Kasikornbank, Thailand’s fourth-largest lender by assets, plans to open its first branch in Phnom Penh by August, according to a report from Nikkei Asian Review. ...

The Interior Ministry has struck a deal with China to buy 200 fire­trucks this year, nearly doubling Cam­bodia’s current fleet in a bid to bet­ter serve the country’s rural reach­es, officials said on Monday. ...

Indonesian firm Sri Rejeki signed a $50 million deal with the Min­istry of Interior last week to sup­ply Cambodia’s police and armed forces with new uniforms, ac­cording to the Indonesian Em­bassy and media reports. ...

The Ministry of Labour is eyeing the creation of a draft law that would codify the sometimes-nebulous process that determines the garment industry’s minimum wage, attendees at the ministry’s annual meeting were told last week. ...

Cambodia and Thailand are set to have a new international border crossing on National Road 5, linking Banteay Meanchey province and Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province. ...

Mobile SIM card sales slowed to a crawl in 2015 while the number of new subscribers using mobile internet services leaped by 30 per cent, according to a Ministry of Telecommunications factsheet. ...