Population and censuses

Australia’s plan to resettle refugees in Cambodia may be a win-win opportunity for the two countries but is also short-sighted, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. In a commentary posted Tuesday, the center’s Asian program said Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was ...

Sok Hieng* is concerned about a government census of foreigners that some observers believe will focus primarily on those of Vietnamese descent. “I am afraid that I will be forced to leave Cambodia because I do not have ID yet,” said Hieng, a 33-year-old construction worker ...

The Interior Ministry’s general department of immigration began its “census” of ethnic Vietnamese people living in Cambodia on Sunday, with Sok Phal, the department chief, touring Pursat province villages along the Tonle Sap lake. Pursat provincial police chief Sarun Chanthy said that General Phal and a ...

The Ministry of Labour plans to delay signing off on a controversial agreement to reopen a pipeline of Cambodian maids to Malaysia until a deal is reached on a second agreement regarding other migrant workers, a ministry official said yesterday. Labour Ministry spokesman Heng Sour told ...

To get his teenage daughter and niece on a plane yesterday after 10 months of alleged abuse and forced marriages in China, Kim Vicheat* said he had to bury his family in debt because the Cambodian consulate refused to fund their repatriation. The two 19-year-olds told The ...

Australia has considered sending up to 1000 refugees to live on a remote island off the coast of impoverished Cambodia under a controversial resettlement agreement,, according to an opposition leader in Phnom Penh. Australian officials have visited several sites to accommodate the refugees now on Nauru, ...

High-level bureaucrats from Australia have visited several sites in Cambodia over the past two months to view properties where refugees from its overseas detention centre on Nauru could be relocated, the Post has learned. Separate sources, who cannot be named because of the sensitivity of the ongoing negotiations, ...

The ministries of Labor and Interior met on Thursday to outline the government’s plan to more strictly enforce measures for employers of foreign nationals to ensure that their staff has proper documentation. Seng Sakada, director-general of the Labor Ministry’s labor department, said previous efforts have not ...

Thailand’s Director-General of Department of Employment Sumet Mahosot and Cambodian Director-General of the Labor Department Seng Sakada today briefed the press about the controversial migrant worker issue. The discussion comprised 4 topics. First, there is the requirement of proof of nationality, so Cambodia will arrange for ...

The families of three Cambodian workers killed after a six-storey condominium building collapsed at a construction site just north of Bangkok earlier this week have been paid compensation. ...

Cambodia’s embassy in Malaysia yesterday denied pressuring domestic workers from the Kingdom into renewing their visas, after rights groups told the Post last week that the embassy exploited a legal loophole to keep maids in the country. The statement came as a Malaysian employers association, which has observed the drafting ...

At least six people, including three Cambodian migrant workers, were killed late on Monday when a condominium construction project north of Bangkok collapsed, according to news reports, officials and witnesses at the scene. Twenty-four people, at least one of whom is Cambodian, were also injured in ...

After four days of waiting amid a mounting death count, Yat Meng got a call that his younger brother, Pheng, was found dead yesterday, buried under the concrete slabs of a collapsed condominium just north of Bangkok. Pheng, 20, was one of two dead Cambodian migrant ...

The number of Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand has risen to 190,000 thanks to the new one-stop service centers set up across the border, Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor said Wednesday. Labor Ministry spokesman Heng Suor said about 190,000 migrant workers—some with a full complement of legal ...

Thailand will lose its beneficial tax treatment on exports to the European Union next year, and Cambodia’s manufacturing sector could be set to capitalise. Following three consecutive years of upper-middle income status as defined by the World Bank, Thailand will on January 1 lose its Generalised ...

Seventy-five Cambodian workers and six children marooned for 10 days after being lured to build a resort on Koh Mook in Trang’s Kantang district were rescued on Sunday evening. Meanwhile, Employment Department chief Sumet Mahosot yesterday said 444,097 migrant workers and 48,541 accompanying persons had ...

Cambodia’s embassy in Kuala Lumpur has played a key role in pressuring domestic workers to stay in the country despite fears for their welfare, rights groups have said. While a moratorium was placed on sending domestic workers to Malaysia in 2011 amid mounting concerns over abuses, ...

A survey of 10 Cambodian provinces is studying the whereabouts and plans of migrant workers who were recently repatriated from Thailand, fearing crackdowns on foreign workers there after the coup. During a workshop hosted by Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility (CARAM) yesterday, Ministry ...

In June, after about a quarter million migrant workers returned from their jobs in Thailand fearing the military junta’s crackdown on illegal labor, Cambodia’s government announced it had slashed the cost of emigration, and would charge workers only $49 to legally return to work across ...

Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries are preparing for a major regional meeting, which will be held in Burma Aug. 10. Analysts say Cambodia should raise ongoing security issues that threaten regional economic integration at the Asean Regional Forum. The South China Sea issue continues to ...

Thailand is on the process to heighten flexibility for workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia to obtain legal identification paperwork and land needed work in the country, said the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington. In the release issued chiefly to show Thailand’s actions to fight human ...

Hundreds of Cambodians hoping to migrate to Japan to work in the electronics industry yesterday protested outside an NGO that they claim conned them out of up to $200 each with promises of jobs. About 100 protesters – out of a total of 300 who are ...

Seng Sakada, director-general of the Labor Ministry’s labor department, will lead a delegation to Singapore on Saturday to study the ministry’s pilot program to send domestic workers to the city-state, a recruitment agency director confirmed Wednesday. The team will investigate the success of the program, which ...

Passport offices will be set up in six more provinces in an effort to ease the remigration process for Cambodian workers heading back to Thailand, according to a Ministry of Interior official. Mao Chandara, director of the Ministry of Interior’s passport department, said the new offices ...