News

More than 10 students at Bak Chenhchean senior high school in Pursat province’s Phnom Kravanh district fainted yesterday. Major Tann Kearith, district police chief, said the students fainted at about 9am and were sent to the provincial referral hospital following the incident. ...

The General Department of Taxation (GDT) collected $1.93 billion in tax revenue last year, a 30 percent increase over 2016 and well above the government’s own projections, according to the department’s director, Kong Vibol.​ ...

The fledgling Grassroots Democracy Party appealed yesterday to the predecessors of the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party to contest this year’s upcoming elections in a bid to dilute the ruling party’s vote share – an offer they quickly turned down. ...

Two activists from the conservation group Mother Nature were tried yesterday in Koh Kong for photographing a vessel at sea, with their lawyer asking the court to dismiss the charges due to a lack of evidence that they had committed any crime. ...

Former Funcinpec official and ex-Deputy Prime Minister Lu Lay Sreng was found guilty in absentia of defaming Prime Minister Hun Sen today for comments made in a private phone conversation that was secretly recorded and disseminated without his knowledge. ...

Social media celebrity and card-carrying CPP member Thy Sovantha yesterday said she will file a lawsuit against wildlife NGO head Suwanna Gauntlett alleging discrimination after the latter allegedly denied her access to an ecotourism program the group is launching today in Koh Kong province.​ ...

A UN agricultural development body presented a report evaluating their commitment of over 20 years and $189.5 million to Cambodia’s rural farmers yesterday, finding both positives and negatives in their partnership with the government. ...

A Better Factories Cambodia report shows little improvement in the continued use of short-term contracts and safety and health conditions for workers at surveyed factories, with total compliance of all exporting factories still stuck at less than 50 percent. The International Labour Organisation’s compliance program conducts ...

Tbong Khmum provincial officials have announced a crackdown on illegal checkpoints along the Vietnamese border, possibly in response to a purported warning issued by Prime Minister Hun Sen to provincial Governor Ly Leng to monitor the transport of timber in the province. Local media reports contend ...

Preah Sihanouk provincial authorities have warned tourist boat companies they will be shut down if they operate without legal permission or fail to join the tourist boat association.The warning came after a meeting between provincial councilors, provincial authorities, representatives of the tourist boat association, and ...

Guidelines for mitigating the environmental impact and managing risks of hydropower dams in the Mekong River will be established at the end of March 2018 after discussion between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Forty-five officials from the four countries have been meeting in Vientiane this week ...

The government subsidised $51 million worth of electricity across the country in 2017 in a bid to bring down the price of electricity for low-income households, according to the Minister of Mines and Energy. Speaking at the annual conference of the Electricity Authority Cambodia yesterday, Suy ...

Transport Minister Sun Chanthol is to order all road construction companies to install signs at their worksites in an effort to avoid traffic accidents.Speaking at the closing ceremony of the National Road Safety Committee’s annual meeting yesterday, Mr Chanthol said he would order companies working ...

Sean Pengse, a former government minister under the Lon Nol regime and an outspoken critic on Cambodia’s border issues with Vietnam, has died in France at 82. Pengse passed away after a long illness in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to a statement issued ...

The government of Japan yesterday donated about $8 million to the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, to support its demining operations and victim assistance. Heng Ratana, CMAC general director, met with members of a technical team from the Japan International Cooperation System to review progress on the ...

The National Election Committee has released the official voter list for July’s general election, containing nearly 85 percent of eligible voters. The voter list contains 8,380,217 names out of 9,882,746 eligible voters, or 84.8 percent of those aged 18 and over. There will be 22,967 polling stations ...

Indian government data show that annual trade between the Cambodia and India has lagged of late, decreasing by nearly 30 percent to $141 million during the last Indian fiscal year, which ran from April 2016 to May 2017. That’s the lowest level since the 2012-2013 ...

As the country enters its second fishing season, fish catches are widely expected to decline due to adverse weather conditions. The second phase of the fishing season started on January 21 and will end on the 26, according to the Fisheries Administration, who issued a public ...

A report released Tuesday by Better Factories Cambodia (BFC), a programme of the International Labour Organisation, found that compliance in the garment industry with working conditions regulations has improved substantially in the last four year. ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Monday said the Cambodian government could not afford more passport printing machines to speed up the process of documenting the hundreds of thousands of citizens working abroad, predominantly in Thailand. ...

Estimates suggest that 0.38 percent of Cambodians have contracted TB, an alarming statistic for a country still recovering from decades of conflict. This rate shows an improvement from the early 2000s, when up to 1.5 percent of Cambodians had the disease. Even so, villagers who live far ...

New proposed rules from the European Union restricting the import of palm oil would likely affect Cambodia’s nascent palm oil sector, but the country’s main exporter is hoping that demand from India and China will cushion the blow. ...

China will hold its second military exercise with Cambodia in March focusing on counter terrorism, the Cambodian army said on Wednesday, in another sign of the Southeast Asian country strengthening ties with Beijing. The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces said in a statement the exercise would ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng bemoaned Phnom Penh’s sewage infrastructure and criticised the Ministry of Environment for allowing untreated waste water to flow into the Mekong and Bassac rivers in unscripted remarks on Monday. ...