Industries

Muon Sokmean, a 29-year-old garment worker, scrambled off Veng Sreng Street on January 3 with military police in violent pursuit, brandishing their batons. What had been a militant protest for a $160 minimum wage in the garment sector—with many protesters lobbing rocks and crude Molotov cocktails ...

The trial of 23 men arrested at violent demonstrations in early January continues at 8am today, and unionists are planning on rallying outside the court in a show of solidarity. About 100 union members will join staff from the Cambodian Labour Confederation and the Coalition of ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism says the country’s tourism sector is growing at an unsustainable rate that will cause a massive shortfall in skilled tourism-related labour. The ministry’s statistics department director, Kong Sopheareak, told local media that as tourist arrivals increase substantially every year, the challenge is ...

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has defended its decision not to pay a survivors’ pension to the family of a teenager killed in a ceiling collapse at the Wing Star Shoes factory in Kampong Speu province last May. On the anniversary of the collapse on ...

In his fight for workers’ rights, Sar Mora has learned to be stubborn. The union leader behind the closure of Caltex gas stations across Phnom Penh, Mr. Mora’s members remained on strike Sunday despite an apparent agreement on Friday for workers to return to their stations. “We ...

Two factories in the Manhattan Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Svay Rieng province’s Bavet town have fired more than 40 workers since thousands-strong strikes ended early this month, unions say. Terminations at Best Way and Fico garment factories were bosses’ way of exacting revenge for the ...

Cambodia’s steadily declining rubber prices have hit critically low levels that are destined to only get worse as Thailand prepares to offload huge rubber stocks, the secretary-general of the Association for Rubber Development of Cambodia said Thursday. As the price of natural rubber has paralleled a ...

After a three-year moratorium on sending maids overseas—sparked by a spate of serious abuses by recruiters and employers—momentum is building to once again send hundreds of thousands of Cambodian women to work overseas as domestic servants. Since Prime Minister Hun Sen shut down the industry in ...

When an overloaded and illegally built storage level at the Wing Star Shoes factory in Kampong Speu province collapsed last May 16, officials went into damage control, promising to compensate victims using a relatively new state fund. But one year after teenager Kim Dany and co-worker ...

The head of a construction company working to upgrade Phnom Penh’s dusty, potholed Veng Sreng Street said Thursday that the project would take twice as long to complete as expected. In November, Phnom Penh governor Pa Socheatvong announced that a 6.5 km strip of the road—which ...

A decision to extend the validity of Cambodian passports from three to 10 years should encourage more Cambodians to travel, claims the Ministry of Interior. The ministry’s General Directorate of Identification head, General Mao Chandara, was quoted by local media as saying, the department would begin ...

Almost 850 demonstrations or strikes have occurred nationwide since the year began – a seemingly anarchic average of more than six a day, the General Commissariat of National Police announced this week, blaming politicians, NGOs and trade unions for helping to incite demonstrators and “complicating ...

A special committee set up in March to settle a long-running land dispute between 52 families in Kompong Chhnang province and the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem has finished its work, leaving 17 families without a deal. Deputy provincial governor Dork Sothea, who ...

Sergei Polonsky, a Russian fugitive and former billionaire real estate magnate who was recently released from prison in Cambodia, has grand plans for a string of islands off the coast of Sihanoukville. Less than a month after the Supreme Court refused to extradite him to Russia ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen will lead Cambodian delegation to attend the 4th Summit of Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CIAC) in China next week, according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The delegation companying Hun Sen will ...

Chevron’s Caltex gas stations are potentially losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per day in Cambodia, striking employees say. Workers say Caltex, a subsidiary of US-based multinational Chevron, sells between 5,000 to 10,000 liters per station per day, putting its losses between $350,000 to $700,000 ...

Approximately 50,000 people are facing high risks of HIV/AIDS infections in Cambodia, a health official said Wednesday. Dr. Mean Chhi Vun, director of Cambodia’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STDs, said the high-risk groups of HIV/ AIDS infections are among female entertainment workers, drug users, ...

The Ministry of Economy and Finance on Monday announced the release of standardised bidding forms for public contracts, a measure it said would increase transparency and accountability, though the opposition and Transparency International Cambodia offered more cautious assessments yesterday. According to a state media announcement, the ...

Dara Raksmey, the owner of a pharmacy of the same name on Phnom Penh’s Street 294, keeps a record of every can of Dumex baby formula she sells. “If you buy six large cans you get a scooter and if you buy 12 large cans you ...

After a monthlong test run saw 10 buses often filled with passengers, a Chinese-owned company promised in early March to inject millions into the project and add hundreds of new buses. But Global Trade Development left the project last month after the municipality refused to grant ...

Labour union leaders denounced the government yesterday, alleging unfair treatment in the wake of nine union worker arrests last week and a hefty bail payment by a union president yesterday. Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), yesterday paid $25,000 ...

Cambodia’s tourist arrivals registered a 4.7% growth in March according to the country’s statistics and tourist Information Department. The country attracted 400,076 visits compared to 382,206 during the same month last year. Released by the Ministry of Tourism, late last week, data showed Vietnam led the field ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has labeled the trial of two teenagers arrested during the lethal suppression of a garment sector strike in November 12 as “deeply flawed” and said that the pair should be spared prison sentences. In a statement Sunday, the rights organization claims that ...

More than 200 striking workers at Cambodia’s largest brewer, Cambrew Ltd., resumed work on Saturday after the company agreed to lift their monthly salary from $120 to $150 as they had been demanding. The workers at the company, which produces Angkor beer and Black Panther stout, ...