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One of Cambodia’s most active unions has filed a complaint against a Thai mobile phone provider, claiming it laid off more than 50 staff members without warning and without compensation. The complaint was filed with the Ministry of Labor against Mfone, a company that belongs to ...

About 30 metres of luxury timber were seized in Ratanakirri province on Sunday after national and provincial military police set up a road block near the border with Vietnam, according to police officials. The high-end lumber was being smuggled over a dirt road in Lumphat ...

Commercial property prices and rents in Siem Reap have increased by 10 to 20 per cent in the last year, according to the town’s newest real estate agency. Cambodia Properties Limited (CPL) opened its first Siem Reap branch three months ago, recognising a need for sound ...

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) will forgo an opportunity to voice opposition to the Xayaburi dam project – which member state Laos began building in November – when it meets for its annual council meeting next week. Surasak Glahan, communications officer with the MRC secretariat, confirmed ...

Amid mounting calls for government intervention to stop the destruction of indigenous land by a Vietnamese rubber company in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, the Forestry Administration has begun investigating claims that the firm is logging illegally and clearing land outside of its concession, officials said ...

Free Trade Union of Workers of Cambodia said Tuesday it had sued the director of Thailand’s Mfone Co Ltd for not respecting local labor laws. In a letter issued Tuesday to the Department of Labor Disputes, the union’s deputy secretary general Sam Srey Mom accused Mfone ...

A mining company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange has announced a plan to pay $14 million for a license to explore for copper in Preah Vihear province, in a deal involving local conglomerate Royal Group. In an announcement to the bourse last Thurday, Geopacific Resource ...

The company of Russian businessman Sergei Polonsky, who is currently being detained by Cambodian authorities after a maritime incident off the coast of Preah Sihanouk province last week, is being investigated by the Russian Interior Ministry for fraud, according to a statement on the ministry’s ...

Rights group Adhoc has requested that the government cancel economic land concessions held by two Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, on the grounds that the firms are logging and exporting wood illegally. “Adhoc calls on the Royal Government of Cambodia to immediately cancel the ...

Geopacific Resources, an Australian mineral exploration company focused on gold and copper projects in Fiji, wants to take over Worldwide Mining Projects Limited, a mineral assets searcher in Southeast Asia. Worldwide Mining Projects Limited has signed a sales agreement with Golden Resources Development, a South Korean ...

Former Adamus Resources executives Milan Bojanjac and Ron Heeks are plotting a return to the Australian bourse, through a deal with the Charlie Bass-backed Geopacific Resources. In a deal it said would give it access to a substantial land- holding in Cambodia, Geopacific announced plans for ...

In the latest bid for an increase in garment-industry wages, Free Trade Union (FTU) president Chea Mony yesterday called on the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) to come to the table and discuss a $120-per-month minimum wage. A few days after Cambodian Confederation of Unions ...

While the scores of new condominium properties appearing in Phnom Penh are selling well, their buyers are mainly speculators hoping to make quick profits, a leading property firm said. A report by international realty group CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), distributed Wednesday, says that the city’s property market in ...

Cambodian politicians have begun a public campaign to defend their records on land policies, as they prepare for the run-up to July elections. Politicians from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as the opposition Sam Rainsy and Human Rights parties, have said they will give ...

Even as the skyline of Phnom Penh grows with the symbols of modern architecture, Cambodia’s economy still faces a host of challenges. On the surface, Cambodia’s economy is certainly improving. In September, the IMF raised its 2012 GDP growth forecast from 6.3 to 6.5 percent ...

The real estate and construction industry in Cambodia has been boosted recently after two companies won prestigious awards for their work in the Kingdom. Vattanac Capital walked away with the prize for Best Commercial Development (South East Asia) for the Vattanac Capital Tower at the second ...

Cheng Kheng, director of the CPL real estate company, has been elected to be president of the Cambodian Valuers and Estate Agents Association in 2013, after Sung Bonna, director of the Bonna Realty Group, ended his 2012 term. ...

Union reps and government officials are offering significantly different – if both substantial – numbers in their year-end tallies of garment workers who fainted on the job in 2012. The Free Trade Union yesterday announced that the number of workers to faint in factories rose to ...

Housing development company the Ly Hour Group said it has begun work on its second major project, called Vimean Phnom Penh The Commercial Zone, after its first project Vimean Phnom Penh was successfully completed. The company said the amount of traffic along Phnom Penh’s Chea Sophara ...

Approximately 1,686 workers in garment and shoe factories got fainted last year due mainly to overwork, poor health, exposure to chemical substances, and hysteria, a Cambodian labor official said Wednesday. Pok Vanthath, vice-chief of the Labor Ministry’s vocational training department, said the mass fainting incidents had ...

Amid threats of another mass strike in the thriving garment sector, the Ministry of Social Affairs has called a meeting with the industry’s leading players to discuss union demands for a $150-per-month minimum wage, a letter obtained yesterday reveals. At the behest of Prime Minister Hun ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers and a local rights worker yesterday discovered about 3,000 more logs that have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, according to rights group Adhoc. The logs were found stockpiled in dense forest inside ...

A group of ethnic Kreung families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have accused a wealthy plantation owner of destroying their crops and threatening to evict them from their homes, local officials and villagers said yesterday. Soeun Sarath, a representative of 13 indigenous families living in Kaleng ...

With two Chinese firms due to start work on a 400-km railway, steel mill and port in July, an environmental impact assessment (EIA) has yet to be conducted, and affected provinces are still largely in the dark about the massive infrastructure project. In a ceremony in ...