Manufacturing

A monitoring group backed by the United Nations said it would begin to publicize garment factories’ compliance with worker rights and safety standards in Cambodia, a controversial program that its organizers say will be the world’s most extensive initiative to improve working conditions at plants. The ...

Solar-powered tuk-tuks could be rolling off the assembly lines in Phnom Penh as early as March next year, allowing local tuk-tuk drivers a cost-effective and greener alternative to using petrol, according to the company manufacturing the vehicle. Star 8, the Australia-based alternative energy firm behind the ...

Nine garment workers and two Chinese managers were injured on Friday in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district after a riot broke out among 300 workers protesting for higher wages and improved working conditions, officials said Sunday. Commune police chief Mao Sovann said workers at the SL Garment ...

Riot police and groups of men in plain clothes armed with sticks, Tasers and slingshots violently attacked a group of anti-eviction protesters conducting a hunger strike at Wat Phnom late last night, injuring several people. Protesters from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community began the hunger strike ...

Cambodia’s garment industry, the kingdom’s largest income maker, recorded 3.65 billion U.S. dollars in export value in the first eight months of the year, up 21 percent from 3.01 billion U.S. dollars over the same period last year, the Ministry of Commerce said Friday. Cambodian ...

Because of ongoing strikes and an inability to fill orders, SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) says it is shedding cash flow as buyers shift away from one of Asia’s largest producers, factory management confirmed yesterday. International brands H&M and Gap reduced their orders, while Levi’s ceased buying ...

A Kampong Speu judge released the vice-president and a member of the Free Trade Union on bail yesterday after the court questioned the two about their alleged roles in a violent demonstration at Sabrina Garment factory. ...

Australian green energy company Star 8 has designed a solar-powered tuk-tuk and is in the process of building a factory in Cambodia to make the vehicles, according to a report in Australian newspaper The Age. The vehicles’ makers said the tuk-tuks will cost between A$2,000 (US$1,865) ...

By the time London Fashion Week comes to a close, 58 high-end designers will have shown their collections. Rail-thin models will have walked the runways. Debate will have raged over size zero. In Cambodia, meanwhile, garment workers stitching clothes that supply the UK high street are ...

Inside the grounds of this city’s old provincial hall, past a green corrugated iron fence, municipal street cleaners and their families are squatting in what was once a bustling government office filled with civil servants. Across the road, the former department of rural development is a ...

The Ministry of Social Affairs on Friday established four sub-committees tasked with finding a new minimum wage for the country’s 300,000-plus garment factory workers, Minister Ith Sam Heng said on Friday. “The sub-committees have a limited time of five weeks for research before they have to ...

Four subcommittees formed by the Ministry of Social Affairs met on Friday to begin establishing a new minimum wage for garment workers that will go into effect next year. Following the meeting, Social Affairs Minister Ith Sam Heng told reporters that factory production rates, garment worker ...

A 20-story retail and office building development opposite Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park by U.K.-based Hongkong Land Ltd. (HKL) is being built without pre-existing rental agreements, the company’s general manager, Daniel Parkes, said Thursday. Land Management Minister Im Chhun Lim last Friday hosted the groundbreaking of the ...

Union workers and leaders appeared divided yesterday on the question of whether to support the opposition party’s planned three-day demonstration at Freedom Park. Campaign promises from the Cambodia National Rescue Party to raise minimum monthly salaries to $150 seemed to have struck a chord with garment ...

A joint committee designed to bring about wage increases in the garment sector will meet for the first time on Friday, a Ministry of Social Affairs letter obtained yesterday states. Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union, said he believed ...

Apsara Authority officials on Tuesday began moving to their new offices far outside of Siem Reap onto land within the Angkor Archaeological Park as part of a swap with the city’s provincial government, officials said. The move comes after Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered Siem Reap’s ...

An investment company owned by the Singaporean government is a minority partner in a fully licensed commercial bank set to open later this month in cooperation with Canadia Bank PLC and the country’s postal service, a source familiar with the deal confirmed Tuesday. Fullerton Financial Holdings, ...

While New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra is working overtime to restore its damaged brand in the wake of a contaminated baby milk scare that triggered a global recall, local distributors whose products included the suspect ingredient are defending their own reputations. Local supplier Dumex Cambodia ...

Investments in Cambodia’s construction sector have continued to grow sharply in the first six months of the year thanks to sound economic growth and investors’ trust in the country’s political stability, Im Chhun Lim, the country’s Minister of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, said ...

Labor activists at the bi-annual Buyers Forum in Phnom Penh on Thursday said that short-term contracts in Cambodia’s garment industry were fueling the high number of strikes affecting the industry. “Most of [the disputes] are over dismissals or dismissals of union leaders and the reason why ...

Siem Reap’s provincial government apparatus, which in 2010 was relocated to a remote site 16 km outside of the city as part of an extensive and hugely controversial swap of government land and buildings, is moving back to its old home in the tourist city’s ...

Around 4000 Cambodian garment workers are protesting after a factory supplying global brands including Gap and H&M fired hundreds of their colleagues for striking over conditions. Union leaders said the Singapore-owned SL Garment Processing factory fired 720 workers on Wednesday while more than 5000 others were ...

Nearly 50 workers, including a woman who is seven months pregnant, fainted at a clothing factory in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district yesterday due to poor ventilation, union officials and labour-rights groups said. The 47 employees at Wanshen Clothing (Cambodia) Co collapsed at about 3pm, ...

Management at one of Asia’s largest garment producers yesterday fired at least 600 employees, days after thousands returned to work following a two-week strike. Most of the workers fired by SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd – which supplies Gap, Levi’s and H&M – were members of ...