Ministries and other national bodies

As the only finalist in its category at Thursday’s Cambodia Information and Communications Technology awards, the Commerce Ministry looks likely to take home first prize for its newly overhauled website. ...

Nearly 100 Vietnamese laborers were detained for deportation Tuesday after they were found to be working in the country illegally during a sweep of construction sites on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich island as part of the Interior Ministry’s seemingly arbitrary enforcement of the immigration law. ...

On the southern outskirts of Cambodia’s capital, a ramshackle factory turns out tens of thousands of bricks each month. Pale rows of freshly fired bricks wait for buyers under the corrugated iron roof, while a 50-meter-long oven leaks a dull heat as it bakes a ...

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party is reacting with a shrug to the move by former supporter Mom Sonando to start his own political party. ...

In anticipation of increasingly adverse export conditions, entrepreneurs from six northeastern provinces of Thailand are trying to strengthen ties with their counterparts here. ...

Bilateral trade between China and Cambodia will be worth more than $5 billion by 2017, up from $3.75 billion last year, according to estimates made public by the Ministry of Commerce on Monday. ...

Cambodia National Rescue Party president Sam Rainsy told representatives of NGOs today that lawmakers from his party will vote against the controversial draft law on associations and NGOs if it is not amended. ...

A Malaysian-flagged oil tanker that was hijacked by pirates last week was spotted in Cambodian waters by the Australian air force Thursday, according to Malaysian state media. Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh, however, said the vessel never passed through the country’s territorial sea. ...

A Health Ministry official said Thursday that an investigation in the wake of a devastating HIV outbreak in Battambang province’s Roka commune late last year had revealed more than 3,000 unlicensed doctors operating across the country. ...

The European Union says the Cambodian government has agreed to the first part of a comprehensive plan they have been wrangling over for more than a year to properly compensate thousands of families that have lost land to sugarcane plantations. ...

The Health Ministry has drafted Cambodia’s first-ever law to control the sale and consumption of alcohol, which imposes a minimum legal drinking age of 21 and would fine retailers who sell liquor to anyone underage. ...

More than 200 Cambodian fishermen trapped in Indonesia were scheduled to be returned home Thursday morning on a charter Boeing 737 airliner following the intervention of Indonesia’s Fisheries Ministry and Cambodian diplomats in Jakarta. ...

Cambodia on Wednesday renewed its call for Vietnam to cease immediately the construction of a military post at an undemarcated border area between Cambodia’s Kandal province and Vietnam’s An Giang province. ...

Less than a week after Unicef announced that primary school enrollment in Cambodia had reached a high of 94.5 percent, government officials and foreign donors met Tuesday to discuss ways to improve the quality of the education those students are getting. ...

The labor minister said Tuesday there were so few underage workers in the garment industry that “we can count them on our fingers,” but a unionist and an NGO countered that child labor was still rife in the country’s smaller garment factories. ...

Late CPP President Chea Sim’s personal bodyguard unit will be disbanded following the cremation of his body on Friday and its members returned to their former police departments and military brigades, officials said Monday. ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Monday extended a rare compliment to Cambodia’s foreign minister, who has sent two missives since Friday to Vietnam, accusing the government allowing encroachment in Ratanakkiri province. ...

The government has released a schedule for minimum wage discussions with unions and factories this year, as workers continue to demand $177 per month to keep up with the rising cost of living. More talks are scheduled from July through January. ...

Thailand and Cambodia are negotiating on the avoidance of double taxation for investors from each other’s side. Thai Ambassador to Phnom Penh Nuttavudh Photisaro told Radio Thailand reporters that if the negotiation is successful, it will save both Thai and Cambodian investors from paying taxes twice. ...

Child-protection NGOs and government officials are urging tourists and residents of Cambodia to stop giving money to street children because these well-intentioned gestures can have devastating effects. ...

A leaked copy of the contentious draft law on associations and NGOs is fuelling fears among its many critics that its purpose is to stifle criticism of the government by giving it broad powers to shut down both foreign and domestic associations and NGOs. ...

The Labor Ministry on Friday announced that formal negotiations to set a new minimum wage for the country’s all-important garment sector—now at $128 a month—will begin in July, reviving the same schedule for talks it used with unions and employers for the first time last ...

The government may recognize the more than 100 Montagnard asylum seekers in the capital as refugees, a senior official at the Interior Ministry has said. ...

Continuing a campaign by the opposition to inspect alleged encroachment upon Cambodian territory along the Vietnamese border, CNRP lawmaker Ou Chanrith on Saturday led a trip to a disputed cashew farm in Svay Rieng province, fellow lawmaker Kong Saphea said Sunday. ...