The Cambodia Daily
Water Festival Vendors in Phnom Penh See Revenue Drop
Provincial authorities have reported an influx of people from Phnom Penh to the provinces over the three-day Water Festival celebration, while vendors who set up shops on Koh Pich in the capital during the holiday said that they had barely broken even. This year saw ...
Minorities Choosing Private Over Communal
Though they held out hope for years that they would get communal land titles, hundreds of ethnic minority families in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces have now opted to accept individual private land titles under Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new titling scheme. While individual titles offer immediate ...
Electricity Vietnam No Longer Involved in Lower Sesan 2 Dam
Electricity Vietnam International (EVNI), a subsidiary of Vietnam’s state-owned electricity giant EVN, is no longer involved in the Lower Sesan 2 dam, a Vietnamese Embassy official confirmed yesterday. Cambodian conglomerate Royal Group and China’s Hydrolancang International Energy Co. Ltd. on Monday signed an agreement in Phnom ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/electricity-vietnam-no-longer-involved-in-lower-sesan-2-dam-6363/
Rights Groups Say Work to Go On Despite Hun Sen's Remarks
Rights groups said they will continue to advocate in land grabbing and eviction cases, and villagers involved in such disputes said they will continue to turn to NGOs for help despite a warning by Prime Minister Hun Sen for civil society to stay clear of ...
Kandal Workers Protest Fired Union Organizers
More than 400 workers of the Next Apparel (Cambodia) factory in Kandal province protested for a third time Saturday and destroyed property while demanding the reinstatement of two workers fired for attempting to establish a union, the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (CCAWDU) ...
Opposition Wants Debt Lowered in 2013 Budget
The opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) has requested the National Assembly to reduce by 75 percent the amount of new debt the government is allowed to take on next year under the latest draft of the 2013 national budget. Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay, who sent the ...
Battambang Officials Halt Clearing of Community Forest - Again
Forestry Administrative officials in Battambang province have again halted logging and clearing inside a community forest and are attempting to prevent student volunteers deployed by the Ministry of Land Management from demarcating land in already cleared areas, local officials said last week. ...
Beeline Sees Decline in Subscribers
The number of customers subscribing to the mobile operator Beeline has dropped by more than 100,000 in the last quarter, and its average revenue per user has sunk to its lowest in more than a year, the company announced in its third-quarter financial report. ...
1 in 20 Firms Carry Out Environment Assessments
Only about 5 percent of the roughly 2,000 major development projects, such as dams, roads and bridges, approved by the government between 2004 and 2011 carried out environmental impact assessments, an official at the ministry of Environment said yesterday. Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh ...
Simon Lewis and Khuon Narim, P.1
http://www.cambodiadaily.com
Millions Threatened by Dam in Stung Treng
More studies should be conducted on the controversial Lower Sesan 2 dam in Stung Treng province in order to understand its potential social and environmental effects, Conservation International (C.I.) said in a statement. The Lower Sesan 2-as well as other dams planned for the Sesan, Srepok ...
Draft Accord on Domestic Workers Completed
Government and U.N. officials yesterday completed the draft of a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) that is designed to guarantee the fair treatment and safety of Cambodian domestic workers in Malaysia. The new draft MoU is an amendment to an earlier, much-criticized version create by Malaysia, ...
Union Seeks Tax Reduction for Garment Workers
Factory workers should get a reduction or exemption from paying income tax as the deductions are forcing them into poverty, the Free Trade Union (FTU) wrote in a letter to Finance Minister Keat Chon. ...
Hun Sen Announces Talks to Begin on Huge Free Trade Zone
A plan to create a free trade area covering roughly half the world’s population by 2015 was initiated yesterday by regional and world leaders meeting in Phnom Penh. During the Asean and related meetings at his office, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that the group of ...
Riot Police Stop March on Last Day of Summits
A group of roughly 100 anti-eviction protestors were blocked by riot police yesterday from marching to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Peace Palace to appeal to U.S. President Barack Obama for help in reforming Cambodia’s land rights policy. The protest, which took place at the Boeng Kak ...
Bilateral Talks, and Their Two Interpretations
Two polarizing narratives emerged after the Monday night discussion between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Hun Sen, with the U.S. claiming it had been “tense,” while Cambodia insisted the talks were cordial. When it came to agenda, Mr. Obama put human rights, electoral and ...
US-Asean Meeting Addresses Economic, Security Cooperation
At the U.S.-Asean meeting at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh yesterday, the U.S. and the 10 Asean member nations agreed to further their cooperation in all areas, including security to ensure peace in the region. ...
Acleda to Launch Banking Services in Burma
Acleda Bank announced on Sunday that it will expand its banking services into Burma by opening a microfinance institute there in January. ...
Criticism Continues of Shortcomings in Asean Rights Declaration
Criticism continued yesterday of the Asean Human Rights Declaration, which was signed in Phnom Penh on Saturday after regional leaders decided to make last-minute revisions that were widely deemed as inadequate. U.N. experts ans civil society groups criticized the lack of consultation in drawing up the ...
Asean Agrees to Promote Free Flow of Labor
Economic ministers from Asean’s 10 member states signed an agreement yesterday to loosen restrictions around the movement of skilled labor in the region, part of preparation for the integration of the Asean Economic Community in 2015. The Asean Movement of Natural Persons Agreement is supposed to ...
Trade, Investment Focus Of Asean-India Summit
With political and cultural ties between India and Southeast Asia already strong, economic issues were the focus of the 10th Asean-India Summit at the Peace Palace yesterday in Phnom Penh, the India ambassador to Cambodia said. ...
Obama Presses Hun Sen on Human Rights
U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Prime Minister Hun Sen on the government’s human rights record during a closed-door meeting between the two leaders in Phnom Penh yesterday, calling for fair elections and the release of all political prisoners. In the first visit to Cambodia by a ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/obama-presses-hun-sen-on-human-rights-record-6174/
CIMB Bank Opens 4 new Branches in Cambodia
In an effort to reach a crowing number of customers in the agricultural sector Malaysia based CIMB bank Plc on Friday opened 4 new branches in Phnom Penh, Battambang and Kompong Cham cities. CIMB wants to provide loans to customers in the rice, ...
Obama to Talk Rights Abuses, Fair Elections
The U.S. will address human rights abuses in Cambodia and urge Prime Minister Hun Sen to conduct free and fair elections and end a culture of land grabbing during President Barack Obama’s visit to Phnom Penh next week. Samantha Power, senior director for Multilateral Affairs and ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/obama-to-talk-rights-abuses-fair-elections-5731/
Grassroots Forum Issues Demands Ahead of Asean
The Asean Grassroots People’s Assembly (AGPA) agreed yesterday on a list of demands it intends to present to the Cambodian and regional governments. A crowd of more than 2,000 people-including garment factory workers, victims of evictions, and sex workers, as well as undercover police-gathered at Phnom ...