ODC English Site
Hun Sen Appeals for Kep's Vines to Be Tamed
Prime Minister Hun Sen appealed yesterday for developers and landowners in Kep City to build fences around their neglected properties to prevent vines from creeping onto the street of the coastal resort. Since much of the land in Kep City is owned by investors who live ...
UN Envoy Calls for Judicial Reform, Lauds Other Progress
The court system is still “chronically underfunded” and laws on its management are almost 20 years overdue, the U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said yesterday. One year ago, during his sixth mission to Cambodia, Mr. Subedi described reform in the courts as moving at a ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/un-envoy-calls-for-judicial-reform-lauds-other-progress-6630/
New solar powered lights for Cambodia
Cambodia’s energy sector acquired a new product yesterday with the introduction of solar powered lights from energy company Total, advancing it toward a longer term solution to meeting the population’s energy needs. An industry player described the products as a nice bridge toward seeing Cambodia supplied with ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/Business/new-solar-powered-product-launched.html
Thai Rights Commission to Publish Report on Sugar Plantations
A final report from Thailand’s human rights commission on the alleged rights violations of a Thai company involved in two Cambodian sugar plantations is expected by late January, a member of the commission said. In July, the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand said its investigation ...
Residents seek compensation as homes fall into Tonle Sap
Nineteen families from Svay Pak commune in Russey Keo district protested for a second day Wednesday after their homes fell into the Tonle Sap River. Twenty-four houses along the river have been affected, they said. Although five have already left, the other 19 refuse to accept ...
Idemitsu, Cambodia sign biofuel production deal
Idemitsu Kosan Co. said Monday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Cambodian government to promote biofuel production in the Southeast Asian country. The move is part of plans by the Japanese energy firm to produce bioethanol out of cassava, a type of potato, ...
Vietnam Confirms Stake in Sesan Dam Bought by Chinese Firm
A representative of Vietnamese state-owned electricity giant Electricity Vietnam International (EVNI) confirmed yesterday that their stake in a dam project in Stung Treng province has been bought out by their Cambodian and Chinese business counterparts. While Royal Group chairman Kith Meng has maintained that EVNI still ...
EU Ambassador Says Listen to Envoy's Advice
The European Union’s ambassador to Cambodia yesterday urged the government to heed the advice of the U.N.’s visiting human rights envoy, who has come under increasing rebuke from officials for his unflattering reports. Addressing a crowd of about 3,000, mostly garment factory workers, at Phnom Penh’s ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/eu-ambassador-says-listen-to-envoys-advice-6582/
Families make plea to PM Hun Sen over eviction
Despite a court-ordered land title in their favour, 163 families in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district last week watched excavators rip apart their homes at the behest of two district deputy governors. The forced eviction, denounced in a petition delivered on Friday to Prime Minister Hun ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/General/families-make-plea-to-pm-hun-sen-over-eviction.html
Ethnic group press for communal title
Economic land concessions granted to a pair of Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district were endangering the traditional lifestyles of as many as 200 ethnic-minority families, villagerstold the Post yesterday. As the companies actively cleared forest to make room for the eventual rubber plantations, the government ...
Pension scheme ramps up
More than 700,000 workers at private companies and factories across 19 provinces have registered to join a nationwide pension scheme that goes into effect in 2015, Labour Ministry officials told the Post yesterday. A branch of the National Social Security Fund (NSFF), the pension scheme was ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012121160211/National-news/pension-scheme-ramps-up.html
Union representatives summoned
Union leaders representing workers on strike at the Tropicana Casino and Resort were served with a summons by the Banteay Meanchey provincial court yesterday after a complaint by the casino’s management. The court summons came around the time Sum Sam Ith, the Tropicana representative, sent ...
UN Envoy Meets Land Dispute Villagers on First Day Mission
U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi, who arrived in Cambodia Sunday on a five-day mission, spent yesterday, International Human Rights Day, in Kompong Chhnang province with about 300 villagers from a community embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the wife of a government minister. James ...
Community forest woes
In the latest chapter of what is proving to be an arduous struggle to protect a government demarcated Community Forest in Battambang province, 36 hectares of the land have reportedly been given over to outsiders including a military official. ...
David Boyle
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012121060181/National-news/community-forest-woes.html
'Cambodia best ASEAN market for Indian SMEs'
Cambodia has recorded a growth rate of 10 percent since the last 10 years, and the time is right for the Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to look at Cambodia as its key partner for accessing the ASEAN marke [sic], Ambassador of India in ...
Logging Reporter Arrested
Cambodian authorities arrest a journalist who exposed the illegal smuggling of timber. Taing Try, a reporter affiliated with the Khmer Democratic Journalists’ Association, was taken into custody on Friday, police in Kratie’s Snoul district told RFA on Sunday. But Ing Savoeun, a representative from the ...
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/reporter-12102012174729.html
Hun Sen Tells Ratanakkiri’s Minorities Their Future Is Rubber
On the second day of his two-day visit to Ratanakkiri, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday cajoled indigenous minority members about their ready adoption of new technology amid the shift away from traditional ways of life, and extolled the benefits of rubber plantations over their ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/hun-sen-tells-ratanakkiris-minorities-their-future-is-rubber-6519/
Cambodia: Prime Minister Hun Sen Mocks Land Dispute
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen mocked a group of ethnic minority villagers who tried to petition him on Friday about their land dispute in northern Cambodia’s Rattanakiri province, after they were stopped from presenting their complaint during his visit on a land-titling campaign. Hun Sen was ...
http://www.eurasiareview.com/08122012-cambodia-prime-minister-hun-sen-mocks-land-dispute/
Hun Sen distributes land titles to Rattanakiri residents
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday distributed 541 land titles covering 1,308 hectares to 301 mostly ethnic minority families in Andong Meas district. ...
Labour shortage in Cambodia's garment industry
Cambodia’s garment factories face a shortage of workers, because of migration, more job opportunities in different sectors and poor labour conditions, industry experts said. According to Ken Loo, secretary general of the Garment Manufacturer’s Association in Cambodia, there is a definite shortage of labour in Phnom ...
Report on Worldwide Land Grabbing Zeroes In on Cambodia
A new report on land grabbing around the world highlights Cambodia as a prime example of the ill effect of the growing global appetite for farmland by industrial scale operations. Released Wednesday in Stockholm by three Swedish NGOs, The Race for Land offers Cambodia as one ...
No loans until poll: World Bank
Discussions on restarting World Bank loans to Cambodia will not commence until after the 2013 elections, a bank official said yesterday. After a landmark freeze on loans announced in December 2010, a response to the forced evictions by the government of residents of the Boeung Kak ...
Government Defends Chinese Dams
Following a dam breach in Pursat province, ruling CPP lawmakers yesterday defended the government’s primary plan to tackle its energy crisis by contracting Chinese companies to build hydropower dams on the country’s rivers. A section of concrete tunnel at the Stung Atai dam in Pursat province ...
Electronics Supplier Files Complaint Against Mfone
Electronic equipment supplier Eltek Valere Ltd. filed a complaint Wednesday with the Phnom Penh Municipal Court against mobile operator Mfone, demanding the company pay the $3.7 million it owes to Eltek from a previous GSM contract, a lawyer for Eltek said. ...