Water and sanitation

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) office in Cambodia said Sunday that a new figure showed that about 2,000 Cambodian children die every year of diarrheal diseases due to lack of safe water, sanitation and basic hygiene. “In Cambodia, perhaps 2,000 die of diarrhea each year. ...

As monthlong flooding that has so far left 122 dead slowly subsides, officials and relief agencies were on Sunday concerned that a powerful typhoon approaching Vietnam may bring more heavy rain and the risk of more floods to provinces where tens of thousands of families ...

Raw sewage spewed onto Street 105 from the antiquated discharge canal running parallel to it yesterday as heavy rains continued to create headaches in the capital. The putrid water lipped homes and local business on the street in Chamkarmon’s Boeung Trabek commune, alarming residents. Togo Uchida, ...

TBONG KHUM DISTRICT, Kompong Cham province – From November to May, the Mekong River is quiet. So is life for the hundreds of thousands of people who live along its banks, which in Cambodia forms a 155,000 square km basin covering six provinces and Phnom ...

Unicef during a discussion yesterday pressured the Phnom Penh Municipality to develop a plan to eradicate slums in the capital, but government officials offered no quick fixes. According to the municipality, there are 281 slum communities in the capital, which 2,033 families call home. Earlier this month, ...

A long-abandoned Pepsi bottling factory that became a part of the tourist trail in Battambang province has been razed to make way for a water-treatment facility, according to officials. On June 19, JICA signed off on a $33.5 million water-supply-system project in Kampong Cham and ...

Evictees of Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community appealed yet again to municipal authorities for alternative housing yesterday, saying garbage and waste has inundated their current settlement and is making it increasingly difficult to enter and exit the area. Borei Keila residents were evicted from their land ...

The third phase of a project designed to revamp Phnom Penh’s drainage system, currently inundated by seasonal rains, began yesterday. Four areas of the city spanning a total of 369,445 metres will be witness to the next stage of the project’s implementation, part of an ongoing ...

Ten days ago, Loun Somaly, 33, left his house to deliver a deposit to the glass workers he hired to replace a window on his rickety sheet metal-panelled house. Ly Sophal, Somaly’s tenacious three-year-old son, followed him outside, asking if he could join. But with floodwater ...

The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) plans to give its leader, Sam Rainsy, a hero’s welcome when he returns to the country on Friday after nearly four years in self-imposed exile. But unless action is taken quickly, Mr. Rainsy will be forced to deliver his first ...

Residents of three villages in Kompong Cham province’s Krala commune are growing increasingly frustrated with problems caused by a local garbage dump, saying it is a health hazard and that it emits an unpleasant odor. Khat Seang, chief of Tuol Porpel village, said the frustration may ...

Since 1998, Phnom Penh’s population has doubled to more than 2 million. High-rise buildings have popped up in the city’s center and housing developments have been hastily erected. Yet the city’s antiquated, decades-old drainage system has undergone little improvement in that time and experts say the ...

Despite steady economic growth in recent years, Cambodia remains one of the least-developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region and faces the challenge of diversifying its economy and moving up the production value chain, the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) ...

The government announced new plans for developing both transportation and rural sanitation at the annual meeting of the Ministry of Rural Development at the Chaktomuk Conference Hall in Phnom Penh yesterday. According to officials at the event, the ministry will be completing by year’s end a ...

The Asia Development Bank‘s Cambodia Resident Mission has appointed Eric Sidgwick as its new country director. Sidgwick aims to focus his efforts on promoting an inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth, said a press release issued by the Asia Development Bank (ADB) yesterday. Sidgwick started working at the ...

More than half of Cambodians living in rural areas still do not have access to treated water, about 200 people heard yesterday at a forum at the Phnom Penh Hotel. The event was sponsored by WaterSHED, an NGO funded by USAID’s Regional Development Mission-Asia and the Stone Family Foundation. According ...

Scientists in Bangkok are about to start work on a new flush toilet especially designed for the urban poor in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Their aim is to create a toilet that will process wastewater in family homes and convert it into gas or electricity, ...

Cambodia’s second conference on social enterprise is set to take place tomorrow with the aim of tackling poverty, social exclusion and health and environmental problems, organisers say. The all-day conference, at the Cambodia-Japan Conference Centre at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, will facilitate discussions among participants ...

A new US$10.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will fund a three-year project by international development NGO East Meets West (EMW) to improve sanitation and hygiene among the poor in rural Cambodia and Vietnam. According to EMW, the program seeks to combat the negative effects of ...

The Ministry of Rural Development yesterday called for increased investment to expand access to sanitation facilities in rural Cambodia as well as more awareness about the link between low rates of access to toilets and high rates of communicable disease. Cambodia ranked at the bottom of ...

Economic growth in Cambodia is being hampered by poor sanitation and hygiene, and rising food prices are leaving people struggling to afford basic produce for a balanced diet, according to a report released yesterday by the UN Development Program (UNDP). The UNDP’s 2011 Human Development Report ...

Industrial pollution ‘hot-spots’ have been identified in waterways in Phnom Penh, Kandal and Kompong Cham provinces following a five-month period of research as part of a UN-backed effort to encourage companies to adopt cleaner practices. The hot spots – defined as a source of pollution where ...

Figures released by the Ministry of Labor on Friday showed that 1,578 garment factory workers have fainted in workplace incidents since the beginning of this year. Pok Vanthat, deputy director of the Labor Ministry’s Medical Unit and chief of its research committee, said that his committee ...

At least 24 international apparel brands have pledged to immediately investigate the mass fainting “phenomenon” that has hit the Cambodian garment factories that supply them, the International Labour Organisation says. Executives of global brands had pledged to work together “to determine the precise causes of incidences ...