Ministries and other national bodies

Garment worker unions have tangled with factory owners over the unions’ plan to use the coming Khmer New Year holiday to launch a nationwide strike. A coalition of eight unions will send a letter today to the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) stating that workers ...

The Ministry of Labour has announced that factory managers must allow employees three days off for Khmer New Year, even as some union leaders encourage workers to extend that time. In a letter to factory owners dated March 25, Labour Minister Ith Sam Heng reminds owners ...

More than half a million Cambodians have been affected by land conflicts involving the government since 2000, with more than 2,000 families across the country subjected to largely violent land grabs during the first few months of this year, local rights group Licadho said Tuesday. The ...

Diplomats, legal experts and political analysts all met in a forum in Phnom Penh Tuesday to discuss the implications of last year’s election and the ongoing political deadlock. Some diplomats, like Dinesh Patnaik, India’s ambassador to Cambodia, questioned the legitimacy of a government the opposition refuses ...

Workplace deaths shot up more than 60 per cent last year when compared with 2012, while injuries and payouts to those injured also saw dramatic increases, according to data released yesterday by the National Social Security Fund (NSSF). Speaking during a conference at the Ministry of ...

Thirty-year-old Sam Hoiy never dreamed her son would have the opportunity to live a life without the cleft lip that has always marred his otherwise delicate features. Hoiy’s seven-month-old son is one of more than 100 Cambodians being treated and screened by a team of ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri province have once again accused the Vietnamese owners of a rubber plantation of illegally logging their ancestral forests in a complaint filed with rights group Adhoc. A district official, however, said the plantation owner, Company 72, was granted an extension on ...

The Ministry of Education has vowed to shift its focus from the quantity of the country’s universities to their quality by instituting a moratorium on the approval of new institutions, officials said yesterday. Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said that with more than 100 universities already ...

Kompong Cham authorities blocked several hundred activists from marching Monday to raise awareness about the environmental dangers raised by Don Sahong dam, officials and activists said. Kompong Cham provincial governor Lun Limthai confirmed that he banned the campaign. “We did not allow them to hold this ...

Following a scathing report from its internal watchdog about the resettlement of thousands of Cambodian families affected by a national railway rehabilitation project that it is funding, the Asian Development Bank has agreed with the government on an action plan for further compensation, it said ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s brother Hun Neng and a Vietnamese state-owned rubber firm are involved in an illegal logging cartel involving several well-connected companies operating on a “massive scale” in the embattled Prey Lang forest, forest monitors working in the area allege. Video footage and photographs ...

Defense Minister Tea Banh will meet Tuesday in Hawaii with U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel as well as nine other Asean defense ministers at the first U.S.-hosted meeting with the regional defense chiefs, officials said. Gen. Banh, speaking at a news conference at Phnom Penh ...

The government and industry insiders are worried about the steady decline of rubber prices over the last three years, during which the area it is cultivated in has grown. “Farmers and investors raised concern . . . over the trend of the market and the price of natural ...

The Cambodian government says it has no plans so far to carry out a lawsuit against the opposition for damages from violent demonstrations in January. The Ministry of Interior has released a report, claiming $72 million in public and private damages, including to 95 different factories, ...

The Ministry of Interior on Friday announced that provincial and municipal governors and deputy governors will now be reshuffled between provinces every eight years in a move that the ministry maintained would help “improve services”. ...

A man and a teenage boy were killed by an anti-tank mine and a mortar shell in separate incidents on Friday and Saturday, according to police. In Battambang province, Chea Toum, 37, was seriously injured when the tractor he was walking behind set off a buried ...

Independent radio station owner Mam Sonando said he would not lead a banned protest he had planned for today outside Information Ministry headquarters in Phnom Penh, but would attend if his supporters went ahead with the demonstration on their own. “I will not lead [the protest] ...

Cambodia is not prepared to join Asean’s single regional market and production base next year, a Labor Ministry official said Friday. Next year, the 10 nations of Asean are to create the Asean Economic Community (AEC). Within this community, labor is to flow freely and import ...

Yin Vuth, one of hundreds of Cambodians who protested against the Don Sahong dam over the weekend, said that if construction on the project in Laos goes ahead, the fish will disappear, and once the fish disappear, the dolphins will be next. “All we will have ...

Cambodian authorities intervened in far fewer illegal fishing cases last year compared with 2012, when Prime Minister Hun Sen first banned commercial angling nationwide in a bid to replenish waterways and aid small-scale fishermen. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which released an ...

Economic land concessionaires not abiding by their contracts could have their licences revoked if they have seriously breached the terms, Prime Minister Hun Sen has said. Illegally seizing forest land would be punished under the Law on Forestry, he said on Friday, speaking at an annual ...

In a bustling room at Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh, doctors from the Philippines, the U.S. and Nigeria gathered Sunday around a young boy, sitting in a plastic chair, and asked him to open his mouth wide. The boy is one of more than 100 ...

Local conglomerate Royal Group said Tuesday that while it is committed to its partnership with Australia-based ANZ bank, it would entertain selling its stake in ANZ Royal Bank for “a very high offer.” “The Royal Group would like to clarify that it is a strong and ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Friday that the country needed to prepare more measures to curb the spread of H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which broke out the worst last year and this year. “We have done a lot to control the spread of the ...