Population and censuses

Cambodia is changing fast. Over the past decade, the capital city, Phnom Penh has expanded exponentially: its bodies of water have been filled in and green spaces diminished. Rural to urban migration has changed the shape of the countryside. Great shifts are under way and ...

Cambodia had dispatched some 22, 300 laborers overseas in 2013, down 36 percent from 34,800 a year earlier, figures from the Ministry of Labor showed Monday. The country sent 13,170 workers to Thailand last year, down 50 percent year-on-year; 8,820 to South Korea, up 8 ...

The Ministry of Labor hopes that a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will see Cambodia resume sending domestic workers to Malaysia by February, but negotiations on the document have stalled after Malaysia recently rejected 90 percent of proposed provisions to protect workers’ rights. Most strikingly, Malaysia ...

Local human rights group Adhoc has called on the government to investigate the alleged detention and torture of a Cambodian woman at a Bangkok casino where she was employed. In a statement released Friday, Adhoc said the government must push for a “full investigation” into the ...

An NGO is working to free two Cambodian women forced into marriage in China, a representative of the organisation said yesterday. Huy Pichsovann, program officer at the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), said that the two women, aged 22 and 27, were enticed from their Kampong ...

Family members of a group of Cambodian workers arrested with fake passports in Thailand on Friday claimed yesterday they had got them through a recruitment agency in Cambodia – an allegation the company’s president denied. According to Hau, Anny Rita Best Manpower promised that the ...

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Country Office for Thailand, Cambodia and Lao People’s Democratic Republic for is pleased to support the official launch of measures to better protect Cambodian migrant workers. On 16 December 2013, ahead of International Migrants Day on 18 December, the Cambodian Ministry ...

Authorities issued an arrest warrant last week for the director of a local NGO involved with an operation that allegedly bilked thousands out of money by claiming the company could find them work in South Korea. Warrants for the arrests of Theun Samnang, head of NGO ...

A pilot scheme sending 400 Cambodian maids to Singapore has made a spluttering start, according to local media reports, with agencies in Singapore reportedly growing frustrated at the slow pace of maid arrivals and “sceptical” about the reliability of Cambodia as a source. Only about 100 ...

Trucks and other vehicles have been backed up for up to a kilometer on either side of the Poipet border checkpoint for the past three days due to administrative changes on the Thai side, according to Cambodian officials. Khiet Bunleap, chief of staff for the Poipet ...

The opposition CNRP has written to the embassies of Singapore and Malaysia requesting copies of draft agreements with the Cambodian government on sending migrant workers to the countries that they say they were not privy to. A Ministry of Labor official last month said the government ...

Fauna and Flora International says its has found three previously unknown populations of the endangered Indochinese hog deer in Cambodia. “This is a remarkable discovery given not only the species’ vulnerability to hunting, but also because all of the sites were outside the existing protected area ...

The Cambodian and Malaysian governments will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) within three months that will restart the business of sending Cambodian domestic workers to the country after a two-year moratorium, a Labor Ministry official said Friday. After meeting with representatives from the Malaysian Home ...

Teenage pregnancies are hindering Cambodia’s development as young mothers are unlikely to finish school and therefore lack job opportunities, government and U.N. officials said at the launch of a global report on adolescent pregnancies on Wednesday. “The Ministry of Women’s Affairs acknowledges that adolescent pregnancies have ...

Malaysia has not yet received a draft agreement aimed at protecting Cambodian migrant domestic workers from abuse, but the government is pressing Cambodia to lift its two-year moratorium on sending maids, a Malaysian official said Wednesday. In October 2011, Prime Minister Hun Sen imposed a ban ...

Cambodia is making headway on its 2015 Millennium Development Goal to improve maternal health and is ahead of its target to reduce its under-five child mortality rate, but it still lags behind neighbouring countries, the 2013 State of the World Population Report has revealed. Released yesterday, ...

About 1,000 maids from Cambodia are expected to be available every month in once the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Malaysia and Cambodia on the matter is signed. The MoU, which is being finalised by both governments, would see the lifting of the ban on Cambodians ...

In one corner of the cavernous training centre, a woman patiently strips the baby blue sheets off a queen-size bed, removing the flower-patterned pillowcases and folding them neatly to one side. Under the watchful eye of an instructor, she then remakes the bed, carefully fluffing the ...

A new set of prakases tacked onto a law that regulates overseas employment recruitment agencies is a “step in the right direction” towards protecting some of Cambodia’s most vulnerable citizens from scams and abuse, local and international NGOs said yesterday. But some remain unconvinced that the ...

It’s one of the world’s 49 least developed countries and almost half of the voting population is unhappy with the current government. But 72 percent of Cambodians are generally happy and spend large amounts of their time laughing, smiling and generally enjoying life. That’s the conclusion ...

At 5am, without any alarm clock going off, a dozen Cambodian maids wake up with near-military precision. Over the next hour, the women sweep, wash and scrub spotless their two-storey training centre in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. They all want to be maids in Singapore, eager ...

Alleged ringleaders of an overseas employment scam the Ministry of Labour says bilked thousands of clients out of money were charged with fraud in Phnom Penh on Friday. Oun Sarath, 30, and Kim Sophat, 29, the director and marketing manager, respectively, of recruiting firm You Can ...

A small survey of families in five villages in Battambang has found that most workers who are lured to illegal migrant work in Thailand cite salaries of twice the average Cambodian wage or higher as their main reason and appear unaware of the risks. Moeun Tola, ...

Only one of the 241 Cambodians questioned for the largest survey of the notoriously abusive Thai fishing industry’s workforce to date said he was forced into the job, according to a new report by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Though some of the findings are in ...