The Cambodia Daily

Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam An yesterday said the government should clear beggars away from the country’s most popular tourism sites by providing them with decent education and legal ownership of their land. “We have performed well in working with homeless people, but I noticed ...

Siamese Rosewood, which is illegally logged and exported from Cambodia in large quantities, will be protected internally as a threatened species following a decision taken in Bangkok yesterday. A meeting of the 177 countries party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild ...

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said yesterday that it had still found no replacement donor to commit long-term to carrying on its work helping indigenous ethnic minority groups secure communal land titles once it pulls out in May. Kan Vibol, project field manager for CIDA’s ...

Just 6 percent of 12,006 commercial freight vehicles passed recent road safety inspections, while an estimated 70 percent of car drivers bought their driving licenses illegally from private driving schools, a meeting at the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation was told yesterday. Many of the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that the government has no role in setting the minimum wage, as Cambodia is a market driven economy, and shot down unnamed people who have been calling for the government to significantly raise the country’s floor wage of $61. “For ...

Seventy-two ethnic minorities Banong families received communal titles to a combined 1,008 hectares of ancestral land in Mondolkiri province yesterday morning in a ceremony attended by Land Management Minister Chhun Lim. Communal titles were designed to protect the ancestral lands of the country’s minorities from outside ...

The Phnom Penh Municipality and delegates from Cleveland, Tennessee, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding to establish sister-city status, officials said. “While we are welcoming [the delegates], there are people outside who are demanding that we solve their housing problems,” said Phnom Penh Governor Kep ...

A U.S.-listed gaming company is set to open its second casino in Cambodia next month, the company said as it announced its revenues had grown to more than $20 million in 2012. Entertainment Gaming Asia Inc. (EGA), which is backed by Macau-based Melco International Development Limited ...

Speaking to hundreds of garment workers yesterday in Phnom Penh, Kem Sokha, deputy president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), appealed to those in attendance to vote for the newly formed opposition party, promising higher wages, social security and free access to schools and ...

Preah Vihear province – The residents of this sleepy district, on the edge of the Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, grow rice, cassava and cashew nuts. But in a few short years, Chinese investors envisage that Rovieng will be rapidly transformed into an industrial town. ...

More than 40 families from Koh Kong province gathered on Friday outside Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Phnom Penh home to ask him to intervene in their land dispute with provincial forestry administration, village representatives said yesterday. According to one villager, 37-year-old Sam Sary, 47 families delivered ...

The U.N.’s expert on housing rights has cited the World Bank’s failure to help thousands of families evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood as a prime example of why the bank needs to make human rights a focus of its land sector programs worldwide. At ...

Authorities in Battambang province on Saturday summoned two villagers from Salmot district’s Ta Sanh commune after they refused to hand over money to officials asking for donations to feed students working in the area as part of the government’s nationwide land titling project. Heng ...

The government has failed to improve transparency of its finances, according to a global report released yesterday, which ranks Cambodia among the worst countries in the world for openness over budgets. The Washington-based International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey 2012- conducted in Cambodia by NGO Forum- ...

Two men were arrested yesterday and more than 1 ton of rosewood was confiscated after the car they were using to transport the illegally logged luxury wood smashed through a police barricade in Kandal province, officials said. Deputy Kandal provincial police chief Sao Sothun said that ...

In a bizarre twist at the Appeal Court hearing of radio station owner Man Sonando, the prosecution yesterday asked that judges drop the charge against Mr. Sonando of inciting antigovernment violence, but then asked the court to uphold another charge leading to an insurrection. Mr. ...

The number of subscribers to the mobile operator Beeline plummeted by more than 400,000 in the fourth quarter of last year—the single-largest drop for the carrier since it entered the Cambodian market in mid-2009—while the average revenue per user (ARPU) increased slightly, the company’s quarterly ...

More than 400 activists fighting the destruction of the Prey Lang forest held a ceremony yesterday in which they tied Buddhist monk’s robes around the trunks of trees – a gesture of protection – to stop them from being cut down. Six monks and villagers from ...

Military police in Preah Sihanouk province said yesterday that they impounded four trucks carrying retail goods worth about $1 million that a lieutenant general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces had imported from Thailand without paying tax duty. The unpaid import duty amounted to about ...

With locals demanding dialogue with the Chinese firms behind a proposed multibillion dollar rail line to Preah Vihear province, an NGO report released yesterday highlights the dearth of information that has been made available on the project. Chinese company Cambodia Iron Steel Mining Industry Group (CISMIG) ...

Nagacorp will build an underground road and retail space linking its casino complex in Phnom Penh to nearby Koh Pich, according to the announcement released by City Hall yesterday. The underground road, which will be 23 meters wide and 447 meters long, will connect to National ...

Less than five months from the national elections, Prime Minister Huns Sen yesterday warned the public that his ruling CPP party would stop making charitable donations towards infrastructure and national development if the party is not re-elected. Speaking at the inauguration of a Chinese-funded expansion of ...

About 100 residents of Mondulkirri province’s Sen Monorom City have protested yesterday for the third time in the past 2 weeks in front of the provincial office of state electricity provider Eletricite du Cambodge (Edc), demanding that their electricity be decreased. Vann Neang, who ...

The Council of Ministers has revealed that its new Airbus A320, meant for shuttling Prime Minister Hun Sen and a select few others around the world, is being leased from China Southern Airlines but refrained from disclosing how much the deal was worth. Last month, CPP ...