Social development

Foreigners seeking to learn the Khmer language have long been restricted by a dearth of resources beyond beginner’s textbooks, often relying on conversation and the methods of individual teachers to advance their vocabulary and comprehension. Aiming to put a small dent in the situation, U.S. citizen ...

Rival factions in the increasingly bitter dispute over land in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood filed lawsuits against each other at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday over a clash late last month. The two sides, in what once was a unified front against the neighborhood’s ...

Village representatives in Ratanakkiri yesterday shared their land grievances with the European Union ambassador, requesting he relay to the government their appeal that no further 99-year land concessions be granted to private companies. Although the Post was not permitted to attend the full two-hour meeting, NGOs present at ...

Amid strict reforms to guard against rampant cheating on the high-stakes national exam, education officials yesterday showed surprising leniency towards underperforming grade 12 students. In a notice released yesterday, the Ministry of Education instructed upper secondary schools to hold re-examinations for grade 12 students who failed ...

More than 1,000 workers held a demonstration in front of Ocean Garment factory in the capital yesterday, burning tyres and blocking the road in protest against the management’s refusal to abide by a ruling that workers be paid in full for a one-month closure. On May ...

Lawmakers reviewed the “troubling” state of human rights in Southeast Asia Wednesday and criticised Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. But they reserved some of their toughest words for Myanmar, demanding an end to United States concessions to its quasi-civilian government. While no lawmakers mentioned Wednesday’s presidential ...

Cambodia has more labour forces than the jobs created every year. Hence, some students who have just graduated from the university can’t find jobs; they need some time to get jobs. Some young people have to sell their labour abroad. Despite the surplus of labour ...

More than 100,000 hectares of forest have been replanted across the country since 2008, according to a government report – but about 90 per cent of that amount can be chalked up to private plantations. Produced by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the report, ...

A huge area of Ratanakkiri province’s Virachey National Park has been declared a protected area under a European Union-funded plan that government officials say will shift forest communities away from dependence on depleted forest byproducts. Chhay Samith, head of protected natural areas at the Ministry of ...

A Phnom Penh court on Thursday agreed to a prosecution request to consider filing more serious charges against a U.S.-based Cambodia dissident Sourn Serey Ratha accused of instigating an armed revolt against Prime Minister Hun Sen. Sourn Serey Ratha, who leads the Khmer People Power Movement ...

Gender studies will be incorporated into the curriculum at Cambodia’s largest university in an effort to shape the country’s top students’ views on the role of women in society, educators and experts said on Wednesday at a workshop on the course. A pilot program will begin ...

The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Wednesday posted to its website a four-page document giving Public Works and Transport Minister Tram Iv Tek’s response to complaints of corruption within his ministry, including that the minister had awarded himself exorbitant bonuses. The ACU said in the document that ...

Transparency International (TI) Cambodia on Wednesday announced it would not be dispatching observers to independently monitor the National High School Exams on August 4 and 5 after the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) and Education Ministry said they would not allow reserve observers at exam halls. TI says ...

Danet* is fourteen, and lives in a house built on wooden stilts, with no walls, and only tarpaulin for shelter. The ‘virginity trade’ is rampant in Cambodia, particularly in the capital, and is “a big problem”, says Tim Huon from Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), ...

Before dawn yesterday, Thai military officials raided a house not far from the border, finding dozens of undocumented Cambodian workers crammed into a room awaiting transportation deeper into the country. The 84 workers were woken, taken into military custody and deported, but the brokers who had ...

A community representative who has played an active role in the long-running land dispute between residents of Kampong Chhnang province’s Lorpeang village and a politically connected company has agreed to back down after accepting compensation. In a deal reached with KDC Company on Monday, Reach Seyma ...

Fifty-two students in Kampong Thom are blaming teacher favouritism and an inherently unequal system for preventing them from sitting the national exam and graduating this year. The students, from Hun Sen Taing Kork High School in Baray district, filed a petition to the provincial department of ...

In the wake of a mass exodus of Cambodian migrant workers from Thailand last month, World Vision says that an alarming number of children have found themselves lost and separated from their parents at the border. In a statement released Tuesday, the organization also said many ...

While Phnom Penh’s garbage truck drivers returned to work yesterday following a brief strike, piles of refuse continued to mount in parts of the city, as trash collectors who had joined the drivers’ cause were continuing the strike alone as of 7pm. On Monday, drivers of ...

A Cambodian school director has been arrested for trafficking teenage students to have sex with foreign donors, police say. Waha Long, the 32-year-old founder of the Underprivileged Children School in the northwestern tourist hub of Siem Reap, could face up to five years in jail if ...

The Thai Public Health Ministry is looking into a report published in The Cambodia Daily about a Cambodian woman allegedly running an organ-transplant racket in which she reportedly persuades people to sell their kidney to patients in Thailand. Dr Thares Karasnairaviwong, deputy director general of the ...

About 30 residents of a planned community on the eastern outskirts of Phnom Penh gathered around the picturesque lake that forms the center of their neighborhood Monday to prevent its developer, a former opposition lawmaker, from reclaiming the land to construct condos. The residents, many of ...

On the road to legal employment in Thailand, Cambodian migrant workers are being made to undergo check-ups that have them cough, strip and give blood and urine samples to prove they are physically and mentally sound enough to work in the country. Obtaining a workers’ permit, ...

Phnom Penh’s trash collectors have again gone on strike over salaries and conditions in a move that could see them stop clearing the city’s streets of garbage for an extended period for the second time this year. About 100 employees of the waste disposal firm Cintri ...