Ministries and other national bodies

The Kingdom’s telecom regulator announced this week that it would transfer telco operator revenues it traditionally receives to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications as part of government reforms on revenue collection. ...

High school and university students, considered particularly at risk of road accidents, may soon be taking lessons on the new traffic law if a proposal from the Transport Ministry comes to fruition. Tram Iv Tek, minister of public works and transport, yesterday said that the government ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday began questioning members of a suspected drug smuggling ring who are accused of trafficking crystal methamphetamine into the country from Laos, according to a police official. ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries yesterday cancelled an import permit for a Cambodian company after it came to light that “natural fertilizer” it had ordered from Ukraine was composed largely of cigarette butts, a ministry statement said. ...

The first Singapore patent has been granted protection and recognised in Cambodia, less than two months after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and Cambodia’s Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts (MIH). ...

Police arrested four men in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district on Sunday on suspicion of smuggling drugs from Laos, confiscating more than half a kilogram of crystal methamphetamine in the bust, officials said Monday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen last week issued a directive ordering all government bodies to hold off on new hires for the rest of the year except to fill existing positions being vacated, in an apparent bid to keep spending in line with the current state ...

The Ministry of Environment is set to join the Ministry of Labour in the monitoring of garment factory workplaces, after creating a working group that will probe the environmental safety of all plants in Cambodia. At a press conference at the ministry yesterday, Minister of Environment ...

The National Assembly’s Seventh Commission, which oversees tourism and culture, summoned four government ministers to answer questions yesterday regarding the development and future of Kampot province’s Bokor Mountain. ...

A four-story crack in the south-facing side of Phnom Penh’s aging “White Building”—which first appeared in early February as a pile driver broke up earth inside an adjacent construction site—widened over the weekend, shortly after a meeting between worried tenants and the firms behind a ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al on Monday said that more than 9,000 hectares granted to companies as economic land concessions (ELCs) were recently taken back from the owners because local villagers had been farming the land first, and announced that 14 companies had been put ...

In the coming weeks, a task force composed of officials from the ministries of tourism, religion, culture and education will lead an expedition to a remote patch of forest on Kampot province’s Bokor Mountain where Vietnamese tourists pray, the education minister said Monday. ...

Due to a lack of funding, the Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts has delayed publishing guidelines that are meant to increase clarity on inspection procedures for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). ...

The Transport Ministry is speeding up work on a joint plan for bus services that would link the far South and Malaysia to meet the needs of commuters between the two countries. Thailand also plans to hold talks with Cambodian authorities this month over increasing ...

Environment Minister, Say Sam Al, said on Monday that the Royal Government of Cambodia has cut off over 14,000 hectares of land and handed over to citizens, and military forces. ...

Cambodia’s construction sector attracted a total investment of 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, down 10 percent from 2.77 billion U.S. dollars in 2013, according to official data on Monday. ...

At the behest of Prime Minister Hun Sen, prisons across the country Sunday marked International Women’s Day by releasing a total of 22 female inmates who are either pregnant or had young children with them in jail, including a woman convicted of attempted murder over ...

The Interior Ministry has given Cambodian dissident Sourn Serey Ratha permission to proceed with the registration of a political party despite the self-exiled government critic’s recent conviction in absentia for plotting an attack on the state. ...

Two government ministers will meet with a National Assembly commission on Monday to discuss a tourism management plan for Bo­kor Mountain, according to CNRP lawmaker Yem Ponhea­rith, who last month visited the mountain to inspect burial sites popular with Vietnamese tourists. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen last week appointed 14 high-ranking officials to a working group that is now responsible for overseeing his bodyguard unit during all events that he and his wife attend, the unit’s commander said Thursday. ...

Police shut down the Our Home orphanage and school in Phnom Penh on Thursday, two days after child sex abuse allegations led to the arrest of its director—a former head of the anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), which carried out the investigation. ...

There are now more than 1 million estimated Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand. This could be a threat to Cambodia’s economy and politics in the future, an analyst says. ...

More than 600 military police will be sent as reinforcements all over Cambodia today to aid the National Police, Ministry of Mines and Energy authorities and court officials as they inspect and crack down on illegal mining in the Kingdom. ...

The body of a fisherman was discovered floating in the Tonle Sap lake in Kompong Chhnang province’s Boribor district on Tuesday after a vicious boating attack, police said Wednesday, in what is the fourth such incident on the lake this year. ...