Social development

Cambodia’s energy minister allayed concerns in parliament over inadequate compensation offered to villagers who face relocation for a proposed China-backed dam on a Mekong River tributary, saying the government has allocated to villagers more than four times the area taken over for the project. Minister of ...

Cambodia improved its performance in this year’s Global Peace Index, climbing seven places from last year to reach 106 out of the 162 countries ranked in the study. The improvement is relative, though, with the impact of violence having cost an estimated $1.5 billion. The Institute ...

The activist Independent Monk Network has called on the Ministry of Cult and Religion to release paperwork proving that an agreement it struck with NagaCorp to help construct an electricity substation at Phnom Penh’s Buddhist Institute does not involve the selling of any of the ...

The financial burden inflicted by hundreds of thousands of returning Cambodian migrant workers has already reached $5 million in government-mobilised emergency services alone, according to official estimates. In less than two weeks, nearly 200,000 mostly undocumented Cambodian migrants have spilled through the Thai-Cambodia border, fleeing what ...

Following last week’s street sweep, children as young as 7 years old were kept in Phnom Penh’s notorious Prey Speu social affairs centre, eyewitnesses, staff and those targeted by the initiative have told the Post, directly contradicting government denials offered earlier this week. Standing at the centre’s ...

Tigers and black bears look nothing alike, but their identical names in some Khmer dialects left some thinking that one of Cambodia’s most endangered species may be attacking people in the Cardamom Mountains. Sitting outside his Santre commune home in Pursat province’s Kravanh district, with bandages ...

The consequences and containment of violence cost the Cambodian economy over $1.5 billion in 2013, just under 10 per cent of its estimated GDP for the period, according to the Institute for Economics & Peace’s Global Peace Index released yesterday. According to IEP executive chairman ...

A request by the Cambodian government for a delay in its universal periodic review (UPR) hearing at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which was supposed to be Thursday, has been accepted, according to a rights group that was to deliver a statement on the ...

Activists working in Prey Lang forest have accused military and police officers of being behind two illegal timber hauls they have intercepted. In the first case, an estimated 50 cubic metres of timber being transported through Kampong Thom’s Sandan district on homemade tractors was found last ...

Six families that were evicted from the Boeng Kak lake community, including long-time activist Heng Mom, confirmed Wednesday that they had accepted a deal from Phnom Penh City Hall for plots of land and titles in the same neighborhood. The families have agreed to plots of ...

It was difficult enough for Savoeurn Dimang when, until a month ago, he was one of just three teachers running the local primary school in Kors Kralor district’s Samrong Leu village. But now, with one teacher having left for South Korea and the other bowing out ...

Workers in an industry where obnoxious, drunk customers and 12-hour shifts are common could gain legal safeguards if a subdecree brought before a Ministry of Labour committee yesterday passes into law. The set of prakases for entertainment workers – which appeared before the Labour Advisory Committee ...

With a number of homeless, beggars and street sellers who were rounded up in caged vans last week still unaccounted for, several of those targeted by the street sweep claimed yesterday that they had been held in Phnom Penh’s notorious Prey Speu social affairs centre. Homeless ...

Conservationists Fauna and Flora International was to send a team to Pursat province today to investigate a man’s claim that he was attacked by a tiger. Ngem Nget, a 51-year-old farmer in Phnom Kravanh district’s Santre commune, reported that while foraging in the Cardamom Mountains on ...

Thai officials said Tuesday they will take back Cambodian workers who re-enter the country legally. The statement follows a mass exodus in recent weeks of tens of thousands of Cambodians amid rumors of a crackdown on undocumented workers. Koy Kuong, a spokesman for Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry, told ...

The International Organisation for Migration says thousands of Cambodian migrant workers are continuing to pour across the Thai border into Poipet. ...

Fearing a military crackdown on illegal workers, Wiang left his construction site in Bangkok without even receiving a single baht for many weeks of work. “My employer said he could pay on June 28. But we can’t wait till then,” the 32-year-old Cambodian lamented yesterday as ...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed to the Cambodian Ambassador to Thailand that no harsh measures are being taken against Cambodian workers while the latter has promised to help Thailand clear up the rumor. ...

A second deadly car accident in as many days has claimed the lives of more Cambodian migrant workers fleeing Thailand in the wake of last month’s military takeover. At least two undocumented Cambodian workers were killed while driving through Thailand’s Chonburi province to get to the ...

In Samrong Leu village, a picturesque community nestled deep in the verdant fields of Kors Kralor district, the acrid smell of smoke fills the air. Outside almost every house in this community, billows of smoke continuously emerge from the domes of homemade mud kilns, drifting around ...

An opposition lawmaker-elect pledged yesterday to visit an undemarcated section of the border in Svay Rieng province to investigate allegations that Cambodian farmers have been blocked by Vietnamese soldiers from using land they previously farmed for years without problem. Svay Rieng lawmaker-elect Real Camerin said that ...

The group in charge of determining the national minimum wage for the garment sector yesterday agreed to increase salaries annually on January 1, determined by discussions that are to take place in the final quarter of each preceding year, officials said. The agreement was signed during ...

A high-level agricultural official in Kampong Speu province has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars from paddy rice farmers after promising to deliver them land titles in January 2013, a rights group representative and a court prosecutor said yesterday. Cher Pich, 44, deputy director of ...

A Pursat man’s reported encounter with a tiger in the Cardamom Mountains has left him injured and in fear, but it has left experts in doubt. On Sunday afternoon, Ngem Nget, a 51-year-old farmer in Phnom Kravanh district’s Santre commune, walked into the woods to forage ...