Education and training

A local legal aid NGO said yesterday that American retail giant Wal-Mart and Swedish clothing brand H&M have failed to take responsibility for a shuttered supplier factory in Phnom Penh that owes its workers up to $200,000 in unpaid severance payments. The Community Legal Education Center ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen lashed out at unnamed critics yesterday, saying there was no corruption in large-scale development projects backed by foreign aid. “[For example] as for the Neak Leung bridge or Kizuna bridge Japan runs its bids in Tokyo. Therefore, only Japanese companies have the ...

The Garment Manufacturer’s Association in Cambodia (GMAC) signed a $3.5 million loan agreement with French international development agency Agence Francaise de Development (AFD) yesterday to build Cambodia’s first garment sector training school. The school will train Cambodia’s unskilled garment workers and other Cambodians who wish to ...

Cambodia planned to allocate 3. 1 billion U.S. dollars, in equivalent to 19.8 percent of the country’s GDP, for national expenses in 2013, a 12.9 percent rise year-on-year, finance minister Keat Chhon said Friday. Speaking to reporters after a meeting at the National Assembly, the minister ...

A NEW report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says GDP growth in Cambodia over the next five years is likely to hit 6.9 per cent, the highest of any ASEAN country apart from Laos. However, the report warns that Cambodia needs to ...

In a single factory that supplies some of the biggest international brands, faintings occurred every day for five years, a new investigation by the Cambodian Legal Education Centre has found. Until just weeks ago, when the management installed new fans, three to four garments workers were ...

The government has allocated more than $3 billion for total government spending in 2013, an increase of 19.2 percent on the $2.6 billion the government planned to spend in 2012, according to a statement issued by the Council of Ministers on Friday. The statement did not ...

Cambodia has made almost no progress over the past six years when it comes to gender equality, and is still the lowest-ranked country in the region, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2012 Gender Gap Index. Ranked 103 out of 135 countries surveyed, Cambodia placed last ...

The Ministry of Labor on Sunday launched an educational campaign aimed at preventing further mass faintings in garment factories, a ministry official said yesterday. Meng Hong, director of the ministry’s inspection and legal affairs department, said that the campaign would target more than 30,000 garment workers ...

Education garment workers and their bosses on how to avoiding fainting is the latest strategy the Ministry of Labor is using to address a problem that has plagued the industry in the past two years, a ministry official said yesterday. Labor Ministry Secretary of State Oum Mean said he ...

Gender inequality in education is still palpable in Cambodia, causing women to be undervalued in the workplace and their potential to be untapped, the Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs said during the celebration of the United Nations International Day of the ...

Students finishing their secondary education this year are carefully looking at market demand to decide what to study to ensure solid future earnings. Many educators say the recent growth of the construction sector in Cambodia is encouraging parents and students to enroll at the universities of ...

When 29-year-old store manager Srey Mom sent her mother in Takeo province some money to pay young people to help with the rice planting, her mother told her it was no use – the young people had abandoned the village to seek their fortunes in ...

Poor education and a lack of skills are still major challenges for Cambodian women and a recent meeting in Phnom Penh with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the United Nations Development Program set out to validate an action plan on women’s economic empowerment that ...

The new list of reforms approved by the government at a high-level meeting with its foreign donors on Wednesday offer a mixed bag of targets, with some sectors, such as education, given more ambitious goals than before, while others had their ambitions scaled back and old goals ...

Unable to effectively police the Cardamoms alone, the Cambodian government partners itself with several international NGOs. The forests directly north of Highway 48 arc patrolled with the help of Wildlife Alliance. Beginning in 2002 with two ranger stations, Wildlife Alliance now operates six outposts in the ...

Social work, long-established in developed countries but unheard-of in Cambodia, could be set to change the face of child protection in the country as interest in the field grows. Last week, a hundred potential social workers from around the country came to Phnom Penh for an ...

Representatives of Cambodia’s booming tourism industry yesterday called on the Asian Development Bank to provide funding for workforce training in the sector. During the meeting at the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, tour operator Ho Vandy, who also co-chairs the Tourism Working Group in the Government-Private Sector Forum, said representatives ...

As China has risen to become the world’s second-largest economy and cemented close political and economic ties with the Kingdom, many people see advantages in speaking the language of their powerful northern benefactor.   From 1994 to 2011, data from the Council for the Development of Cambodia show ...

 A Millennium Development Goal Acceleration Framework action plan presented yesterday by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) seeks to address Panha’s and other women’s lagging economic opportunities in Cambodia. The plan will help Cambodia achieve targeted Millenium Development Goals by 2015. Though no date of ...

Sweden loaned Cambodia US$57 million yesterday for economic country development and cooperation for the duration of 2012-2013. The agreement was made between Cambodia’s Economic Minister Keat Chhon and Swedish ambassador to Cambodia Anne Hoglund at the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) yesterday morning. Keat Chhon ...

A new report – 10 Years of the Better Factories Cambodia Project: A critical evaluation – has been released by Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center. Started in 2001, the goal of the Better Factories program is to improve the working conditions in ...

Unions and labour groups fear a solitary sick day could cost garment workers their entire month’s attendance bonuses – about 15 per cent of their base wage – under a new scheme meant to make life easier. The Kingdom’s 600,000 garment and footwear workers will receive ...

Cambodia’s needs and how they overlap with the UK’s strengths are an important issue in trade and investment relations between the two countries, according to British Ambassador Mark Gooding during a presentation to the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce (CCC) yesterday. Bilateral trade is mainly driven by ...