Social development

Low-quality education is jeopardizing business growth in Cambodia, and local graduates will not be employable in skilled jobs if the government does not quickly implement educational reforms, business executives warned Thursday at the Cambodian Market Intel 2013 seminar in Phnom Penh. During an hourlong panel discussion ...

More than 10 percent of children in the country aged between 5 and 17 work as laborers, with more than 5 percent engaged in “hazardous labor,” a situation that must be addressed by the government, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in a report released ...

With civil society, the opposition and even the ruling party talking more and more about the subject of electoral and judicial reforms in the wake of July’s contested national elections, some groups yesterday gathered to call for reforms in a more modest sector – parking ...

A US-based group of lawyers has launched an online campaign to raise funding to support a lawsuit against a UK company that bought sugar from a Cambodian plantations linked to human rights abuses. The campaign is being undertaken by the International Senior Lawyers Project, which is ...

A group of NGOs released a statement Thursday calling on the CPP government of Prime Minister Hun Sen to begin its program of promised post-election reforms by ending the practice of overcharging for motorcycle parking outside of local markets. The Affiliated Network for Social Accountability-Cambodia, a ...

Less than a week after she was released from prison pending a retrial on controversial criminal charges laid down last year, housing rights activist Yorm Bopha on Thursday led a march of about 500 people to deliver a petition calling on the government to end ...

Despite making some gains, Cambodian women continue to fall well short of their male counterparts when it comes to education and position in the labour market, a study released yesterday by the International Labor Organization reports. Men account for just five per cent more of Cambodia’s ...

More than two months of research into relations between NGOs and the government was officially presented in Phnom Penh on Thursday, with an overriding message of distrust, and concerns that the proposed NGO Law will be repressive. Following the release on Wednesday of a summary of ...

An organisation made up of current and former elected representatives from across Southeast Asia has called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths of two people shot by police during protests over the past three months. In a statement released yesterday, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human ...

Unemployment rate in Cambodia stood at 2.7 percent in equivalent to 202,300 persons aged 15 or older in 2012, according to the first-ever Cambodia Labor Force Survey Report released on Thursday. Conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and the International Labor Organization (ILO), the survey ...

The Royal Cambodian government is continuing talks with US major Chevron regarding the delayed Block A offshore project that would be the Asean member nation’s first indigenous hydrocarbon development. In August 2010, eight years after being awarded the block, Chevron issued a declaration of commerciality and ...

The opposition’s planned demonstration in Siem Reap next month could affect the tourism industry in Cambodia’s most important visitor destination, the government and industry representatives said yesterday. Cambodian Tourism Minister Thong Khon told the Post that the Cambodia National Rescue Party’s (CNRP) December 10 rally could ...

Experts say the government has not yet done enough to promote the studies of science at the university level, leaving Cambodia behind on technology and other science subjects. Louise Ahrens, a project coordinator at Maryknoll, a US-based organization that provides education counseling at the Royal University ...

Technology giant Microsoft is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education as well as the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts to help build a free online Khmer-language database for users to translate documents between Khmer and other languages, a ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district have accused border officials of not only allowing illegal Vietnamese loggers to cross the border unimpeded, but also of taking their side in negotiations with a community forest patrol. Members of the patrol in Paknhai commune’s Lam village said ...

The battle against landmines could soon have an unlikely new weapon after a pioneering Belgian NGO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government on Monday to begin testing teams of sharp-sniffing rodents in Cambodia, with the goal of pitching them into the ongoing ...

nternational Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde will visit Cambodia next week as part of an Asia tour that will also include stops in South Korea and Burma, according to an IMF spokesman. Ms. Lagarde will meet with Cambodian government officials, university students, investors and ...

A private agro-industrial company has come under fire from villagers in Ratanakkiri province who say it has illegally felled resin-producing trees that are their main source of income. More than 1,000 trees in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district are under threat, the villagers ...

Forty-eight Cambodians will graduate today from what is being heralded as the Kingdom’s first speech-therapy training program. The graduates have been trained to fill a void in speech- and language-therapy services for an estimated 536,000 people in Cambodia affected by communication and swallowing disorders, according to ...

Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...

Villagers in Kandal province alleged yesterday that officials had “tricked” them into thumb-printing a petition supporting tycoon Try Pheap’s claim that he is not involved in illegal logging and endorsing his defamation suit against two villagers. In a scathing report released last Wednesday, the Cambodian Human ...

A World Bank report highlighting the rate of Cambodian children exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke has bolstered calls to increase tobacco taxes threefold. The World Bank report, which was released on November 20 and titled Risking Your Health, claims nearly 50 per cent of all Cambodians under ...

With the vast majority of rural Cambodians still lacking access to a toilet, and suffering the incumbent health risks, Ministry of Rural Development officials on Monday renewed long-standing intentions to improve the country’s sanitation infrastructure. Just days after World Toilet Day, the officials surveyed villages ...

A student who filed a complaint to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court against the city’s municipal and military police chiefs over the fatal police shooting at the SL Garment Factory protest on November 12 said Tuesday that the court has refused to investigate his complaint. Neang ...