News

As much as local people are benefiting from the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) recovery project following last year’s record floods, they aren’t receiving all the benefits they could, according to some accounts. Operating in five provinces of Cambodia to restore road access to those affected by the floods, ...

India is considering establishing a cashew nut processing factory in Cambodia to curb exports to India from third countries, according to officials at the Indian embassy. Dinesh Patniak, the ambassador to Cambodia, said Cambodia produced a lot of cashew nuts that were sent to Vietnam for ...

Cambodia climbed the rankings of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2012-2013 global competitiveness report to finish 85th out of 144 countries, an improvement of 12 places compared to the previous year. The WEF report, which was released yesterday, measured the competitiveness of each country on more ...

Sweden loaned Cambodia US$57 million yesterday for economic country development and cooperation for the duration of 2012-2013. The agreement was made between Cambodia’s Economic Minister Keat Chhon and Swedish ambassador to Cambodia Anne Hoglund at the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) yesterday morning. Keat Chhon ...

The ban on sending Cambodian women for employment as maids in Malaysia will be lifted once certain safety and training precautions for workers are established, a senior government official said yesterday. Seng Sakada, the director general of the Ministry of Labour, said that his office is ...

Members of Bunong ethnic minority forest group in Kratie province who accused local police of barring their community patrols in search of illegal logging were told by a Forestry Administration official yesterday that they had no authority to operate. Mr. [Peit] Kun Pedor [head of ...

About 600 garment factory workers continued their strike in Phnom Penh yesterday, setting car tires alight to protest what they said were unfair salary cuts but factory representatives and labor officials described as a normal tax on income. “The factory told us that they cut our ...

More than one year after the government passed legislation to bring in a pension for people with disabilities living in poverty, a preliminary committee to workshop how to locate such disabled people has still not been formed, officials said yesterday. In June last year, the ...

The Ministry of Economy and Finance yesterday urged companies intending to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) to buy insurance to bolster public confidence. Vice President Bo Chanpiro of the Financial Industry Department of the Ministry of Economy and Finance said the finance sector relies not only ...

Families have fallen into poverty and children have dropped out of school due to deficiencies in the Asian Development Bank’s rehabilitation of Cambodia’s railway system, according to a complaint filed to the bank’s compliance review department. According to David Pred, managing associate for NGO Inclusive Development International, ...

Police and court officials yesterday questioned, charged and imprisoned elderly woman involved in the long-running land dispute at the Borei Keila community in Phnom Penh, a day after an anti-eviction protester from Boeng Kak community met a similar fate. In both cases, police and court officials ...

The Senate yesterday approved a law making way for Cambodians to travel to Qatar for work, an official said. The 52 senators present passed the law unanimously and without amendments, said Oum Sarith, Senate cabinet chief. The agreement lets Cambodians work in the oil-rich emirate’s service ...

The government has taken exception to language used to refer to its plan to amend the Constitution dealing with Cambodia’s borders, saying that the planned “amendment” does not constitute a “change”. Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday said that he had launched a study to amend ...

The site of Koh Pur village’s new bridge may still be nothing more than pillars in a dusty crevice in the road, but when the link is finished – some time in December, authorities say – it will be a welcome relief for the village ...

A 65-year-old woman who has spent months sleeping under a staircase at Borei Keila yesterday became the second land-rights activist sent to Prey Sar prison in little more than 24 hours. Phnom Penh Municipal Court investigating judge Ly Leabmeng questioned villager representative Tim Sakmony for almost ...

Protesters from both neighborhoods gathered in front of the Phnom Penh Court on Wednesday to demand the release of the three. Phnom Penh Municipal Court is holding two more land protesters, following the detention of one woman on Tuesday. The two activists, from the Borei Keila neighborhood, ...

A new report – 10 Years of the Better Factories Cambodia Project: A critical evaluation – has been released by Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center. Started in 2001, the goal of the Better Factories program is to improve the working conditions in ...

Cambodia and Iran had agreed to enhance bilateral relations and cooperation in economics, trade, investment and culture, a Cambodian senior official said. The verbal agreement was made between Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Aug. 30 when Hun Sen ...

One of the biggest challenges to protecting Cambodian migrant workers is the sheer distance between their homeland and the countries they are working in, Ministry of Labour officials said yesterday. A pattern has emerged in which brokers lure more and more Cambodians away from traditional border-country ...

Cambodia needs to ensure fair treatment of both domestic and foreign investors if it wants to attract more foreign investors, accordsing to US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Kirk presented the idea during a press conference last week in Siem Reap durig the ASEAN-US Business Summit by ...

Private companies and state enterprises are expected to raise large amounts of funds via the stock exchanges in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia over the next several years. More private firms will list on the Cambodian and Laotian bourses next year, their executives told media yesterday at ...

Almost 100 members of the sales and service staff of mobile phone provider Hellopoint are awaiting a meeting with the Ministry of Labour after submitting a complaint last month claiming that a policy introduced in July amounted to a breach of their employment contracts. According to ...

Contractors hired by Cambodian land brokers bulldozed through four hectares of villagers’ crops in Poipet town on Monday, breaching a truce contract that protected the villagers’ land until January 1 next year. According to the contract, the families residing on land claimed by 11 independent Cambodian ...

A breached flood protection dyke near Prey Ven city that, had it burst during the disastrous 2011 flooding, would have added a further 30,000 to the almost 52,000 households evacuated, is one project nearing completion in Cambodia’s Flood Damage Emergency Reconstruction Project. But the Asian Development ...