Social development

A senior Education Ministry official on Thursday said that jailing students caught cheating, as threatened by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Tuesday, was the wrong approach to cleaning up the national high school exam. Instead, he called for a budget increase to offset losses that teachers ...

A Cambodian national was fatally shot near the Thailand-Cambodia border on Wednesday in the latest of a string of deadly incidents along the border this month, officials said yesterday. Theng Sokla, 27, a native of Pailin province’s Sala Krao district, was hunting for animals on a ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has signed a sub-decree to better regulate pharmacies, a business fraught with fake drugs and fake diplomas. The new sub-decree of the Pharmacists’ Code of Ethics contains 71 articles. They ban distribution of fake drugs and the use of titles not ...

In little more than a year, 16 Cambodians are known to have died from the human form of avian influenza H5N1, the highest number of fatalities in the world. Experts have met in Phnom Penh to try to work out why. The latest victim of ...

A government committee charged with assessing damage from the garment worker protests in December and January has put the value of the destruction at over $250,000. It places blame squarely on the opposition CNRP and a trio of union leaders. That committee’s report, released Thursday, ...

A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...

The Ministry of Education is promising to pay national exam proctors double the fees earned last year in its newest move to stymie widespread bribes exchanged for exam answers or inflated scores. Previously, proctors earned an average salary of 190, 000 riel ($47.50) over the three-day ...

A forest patrol in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district spotted five loggers clearing the community’s ancestral forest on Tuesday, villagers and rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Adhoc provincial coordinator Chhay Thy said that three representatives of nearly 200 ethnic Jarai families in Pak Nhai commune asked for help ...

The opposition CNRP made another pitch for an end to free trade benefits for Cambodian sugar exports to the European Union at a meeting in Phnom Penh on Wednesday with visiting European Parliament members, blaming the benefits for effectively subsidizing companies that are evicting poor ...

Family members of two men slain by military police in violent suppression of a garment worker protest in January were questioned Wednesday at the Ministry of Interior, although the investigation into the killings was officially declared closed on March 16. Soun Nara, the brother of Yean ...

Opposition leaders yesterday announced plans to hold a thousands-strong “people’s congress” in the capital’s Freedom Park on Sunday, despite a ban on gatherings at the site. Cambodia National Rescue Party president Sam Rainsy and vice-president Kem Sokha, following their return from overseas trips to Australia, New ...

Many maternal fatalities in Cambodia are not being officially recorded, experts have warned. According to Unicef Cambodia, government figures indicate that the country’s maternal death rate is falling, the Phnom Penh Post reports. ...

In 2013, Cambodia welcomed 4.2 million tourists, an increase of 17% from the previous year. This rapid growth of tourist arrivals is expected to continue year on year, raising concerns about how to ensure that local children are only positively impacted by tourism. Tourism destinations attract ...

Japan provides US$11.5 million in grand aids to Cambodia for the implementation of the Project for Expansion of National Maternal and Child Health Center. ...

An official with the government’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) said Tuesday that staff there were specifically instructed not to investigate allegations of large-scale bribery inside the Health Ministry so that the unit could settle the case out of court. On Sunday, ACU chief Om Yentieng told reporters ...

For three days last week, the Preah Roka forest in Preah Vihear province was silent, the usual cacophony of chainsaws notably absent. The buzz of trucks arriving empty and later leaving heavily loaded with timber had been replaced by ethnic Kuoy villagers, about 300 in all, ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday heard the case of three people who were charged with fraudulently obtaining passports for four Cambodian women in an attempt to send them to China for marriage. ...

Forty families in Kampong Chhnang province’s Peani commune complained yesterday that a local factory has been polluting their land with toxic liquid waste. Kong Yom, 40, a representative of the 40 families in Krang Ta Ekh village, said yesterday that this is not the first time ...

The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) will join with the Ministry of Education this year to curb cheating during national-level high school and junior high exams, according to ACU chairman Om Yentieng. In order to eliminate old habits of purchasing answer sheets and paying bribes to exam monitors, ...

It is almost four years since the UN General Assembly declared that water was a human right, meaning every person should have access to safe water and basic sanitation, yet 6.3 million Cambodians do not have this basic necessity, UNICEF said to mark World Water ...

Some 625 prisoners could be released or see their jail terms reduced on the occasion of Khmer New Year, which falls on April 14-16, according to the Ministry of Justice. ...

The United States government on Tuesday organized an intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement workshop for some 50 Cambodian and Lao law enforcement officials. ...

Moments after Prak Sovannary heard the Court of Appeal denied her husband’s request for bail, she sobbed over a speaker affixed to the top of a tuk-tuk, condemning the decision to about 150 supporters. “Release him! Release him!” said Sovannary, the wife of Independent Democracy of ...

Police and human rights workers are investigating claims that a Chinese-owned sugarcane plantation in Preah Vihear province has been employing child workers since December. Oeu Bunthany said the Y Heng Company fired her on Saturday after she complained to local police that up to 20 children ...