Public land lease

The government has agreed to review its resettlement agreement with families relocated from railways as part of an Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded rehabilitation project, but has refused a recommendation to set up a debt-relief scheme for the evictees, according to an action plan released by ...

All but four garment factories in Svay Rieng province were closed yesterday, as a strike of thousands of workers there continued into its second week, a labour union official said. The strike, estimated to involve about 20,000 people across the province’s Tai Seng and Manhattan special ...

Five men in Koh Kong province could be prosecuted for stealing from a construction crew after the group allegedly seized tools in January, preventing the construction team from building fences in their village. Police summonsed the villagers from Kiri Sakor district’s Prek Khsach commune for questioning ...

About 50 residents evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood in 2008 and 2009 to make way for a senator’s real estate project once again protested in front of City Hall Monday to demand better compensation. They are among some 3,000 families who were forced ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al met with private firms with land concessions last week to gauge their compliance with government rules and regulations, and adherence to their own contracts. Amid mounting local and international pressure, Prime Minister Hun Sen in mid-2012 ordered a freeze on ...

Trade unions may have failed to get a stay-at-home strike for higher wages off the ground after the Khmer New Year earlier this month. But a strike for bonus pay is picking up steam in Svay Rieng Province, where some 20,000 garment workers protested at ...

Residents of property development site, Boeung Kok, on Thursday gathered in front of an office of World Bank in Phnom Penh in order to present petition to the World Bank. They were seeking intervention from the World Bank to help solve years-long land dispute in their ...

Members of a Lao ethnic community in Ratanakkiri province allegedly burned down three makeshift houses belonging to a rubber plantation on Monday. The 250 villagers in Veun Sai district’s Hatpak village accuse Indian-owned SK Company of encroaching on the forest and ignoring markers demarcating village farmland, ...

Fourteen families evicted from Boeung Kak were left disappointed again yesterday when Phnom Penh’s governor ignored their calls to increase the size of land plots authorities had offered them. During a three-hour meeting, Governor Pa Socheatvong held firm on a 2011 decision that the families would ...

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has launched an internal investigation into a complaint lodged against the institution for investing in a Vietnamese rubber firm accused of illegal logging and land grabbing in Ratanakkiri, an NGO and villager said yesterday. Earlier this month, representatives of the IFC’s ...

More than 2,000 workers at three factories in Svay Rieng’s Bavet City went on strike Saturday, claiming their bosses owed them money. About 500 workers at the You Li factory, which makes baby clothes, went on strike Saturday because management refused to pay them for Thursday ...

Security guards at the center of a yearlong land dispute between families in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community and the Khun Sear Import Export Company on Wednesday accused the families of attacking them during a late-night Khmer New Year drinking party. Nuon Sokhannara, one of the ...

Angkor Gold Corp. (TSX: V.ANK, Stock Forum) has entered into a strategic alliance with Hong Kong-based Tohui Beishan Property Group Holding Ltd. (TG) that could provide up to $10.5 million for exploration in Cambodia, Angkor said Monday. The strategic alliance between Angkor and TG includes TG’s ...

More than two dozen NGOs have written to the head of the Asian Development Bank demanding the immediate release of a draft plan the ADB has drawn up to help Cambodian families evicted to make way for a bank-funded railway rehabilitation project. They also want ...

Members of an ethnic minority in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley stood watch Thursday to block a road leading to the site of a proposed dam after they heard that Chinese workers would inspect the site, community representatives said. Villagers believe that the Chinese company Sinohydro ...

Families evicted for a rail project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) threatened to demonstrate if the bank does not show them its plan to improve their living conditions within one week. About 1,000 families who built homes over the country’s long-neglected train tracks were ...

Representatives of 50 families in Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday alleging that a Vietnamese concessionaire is responsible for destroying about 50 hectares of cashew plantations. Sorl Penh, 58, a representative for the villagers from Nhang commune, said yesterday that ...

In 2011, Oeun Phirun took out a $450 loan from the Asian Development Bank, using half to buy a used motorbike and spending the rest on a small flock of ducks and chickens he hoped to raise. His family and about 1,000 others have been evicted ...

The government yesterday accused Licadho of producing wildly misleading figures on land grabs, following the rights group’s announcement earlier this week that land conflicts in Cambodia have affected more than half a million people since 2000. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Sar Sovan, secretary of ...

Preah Vihear provincial governor Oum Mara has sent a letter to inform Interior Minister Sar Kheng that he is ordering an NGO to close its local offices, on the grounds that the organization is inciting villagers to destroy sugarcane farmed by a Chinese company. In the ...

Police in Preah Vihear province say they have uncovered more evidence of child labor on a Chinese-owned sugarcane plantation and will send the case to court if further investigation confirms their preliminary findings. A former employee of the Lan Feng plantation filed a complaint last month ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...