The Cambodia Daily
'Hong Kong Land' Project Pushed Back to 2013
Property development firm Hongkong Land (HKL) will not break ground on a 10,700-square-meter mixed-use office and retail project in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district until at least 2013, officials at the firm said Thursday. HKL acquired the property behind the U.S. Embassy in April 2011 as ...
Cambodian Workers Get Passports Back, Return Home
Fifty-eight Cambodian migrant workers, 40 of whom who were reportedly arrested and beaten by the police in Thailand’s Songkla province last month, returned to their home provinces on Saturday after their employer gave back their passports, said a worker representative yesterday. “We don’t know yet if ...
Equipment Seized From Plantation at Center of UK Fraud Probe
Forestry Administration officials have seized equipment valued at $1.5 million from a Banteay Meanchey province biofuel plantation, which is being investigated for fraud in the UK, company and forestry officials said yesterday. Sustainable Agro Energy’s assets were frozen in February and investigators at the U.K.’s ...
Hun Sen Lauds Land Project, Lashes Media
Decked out in camouflage military uniforms shipped fresh from Indonesia and wearing soldier’s caps emblazoned with the Ministry of Land Management’s logo, 1,100 students who have volunteered to measure land in an ambitious titling project attended a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday. The uniformed ...
Burger King Says No Plans to Open in Country
U.S. fast-food chain Burger King said yesterday that no one holds the rights to open a branch of its restaurant in Cambodia, despite job advertisements appearing online featuring the company’s logo. . “Currently, we do not have any established franchisee in Cambodia,” Tan Ching Ee, marketing ...
Radio Station Owner Implicated in 'Secessionist' Movement
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday implicated Mam Sonando, owner of the independent Beehive Radio station, in an alleged secessionist movement in Kratie province and announced the government’s intentions to arrest him. “Now, we compete with the ringleader of the Democrats Association, which created the state ...
S'ville Port Likely to Miss Bourse Registration Date
An official at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port yesterday said the state-owned firm would miss its target of registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) next month, a key step before listing on the country’s nascent bourse. Ho Hongsik, director of SBI Royal ...
Garment Worker Demonstrations Pay Dividends
At the M&V International Manufacturing Factory in Kompong Chhnang province last week, 5,000 workers filed through the gates, sat behind their neat rows of sewing machines and refused to work. A year earlier, hundreds of female workers had fainted at the factory after complaining of ...
Job Seekers Flock to Weekend Career Forum
Employers and job seekers traded resumes for business cards by the thousands yesterday in Phnom Penh for the final day of the weekend-long 8th annual Career Forum on Koh Pich. A total of around 15,000 people attended the forum sponsored by the French Chamber of Commerce, ...
Tens of Thousands Eligible for Land Titles Under New Policy
Tens of thousands of families – many of them currently embroiled in land disputes – will be eligible for land titles under an ambitious policy announced by Prime Minister Hun Sen last week, government officials said yesterday. On June 14, Mr. Hun Sen announced an ...
European Union Grants $54 Million to Cambodia
The European Union yesterday pledged to support Cambodia with three grants totaling $54 million, including one payment to help bolster the country’s ability to organize its public finances, officials announced at a press conference in Phnom Penh. “The E.U. will continue to support Cambodia with ...
World Bank Denies It Will Fund Project in Cambodia
The World Bank has denied a report that it is preparing to fund a new education project in Cambodia, 10 months after the bank froze all new lending to Cambodia to protest evictions and Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake. In The, an undersecretary of state ...
Rosewood Seized From Hotel Truck
Forestry Administration officials have confiscated 15 cubic meters of luxury-grade wood from a truck belonging to hotel and casino magnate Try Pheap in Kompong Thom province. Soth Mary, a division director for the Forestry Administration in the province, said yesterday that his staff stopped a truck ...
Gov't Continues to Privatize State Properties
The privatization of state-owned land continued last month with several large government- owned plots in Phnom Penh transferred to state-private property, according to a sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. According to the document signed May 24, the state-owned properties, measuring 40,998 square meters in ...
Cambodia to Miss 2013 Copyright Deadline
Cambodia will not meet the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) deadline to enforce copyright laws by 2013 and will likely ask for an extension, an official at the Ministry of Commerce said yesterday. The deadline was already extended once by the WTO in 2005 after it ...
Despite Maid Abuses, Cambodia Retains Trafficking Ranking
Cambodia held on to its Tier 2 ranking for the third straight year in the U.S. State Depart- ments latest global Trafficking in Persons Report, which praised the country for a rise in prosecutions, but criticized the country over a new sub-decree on migrant labor. In ...
Report Shows Rise in Garment Labor Disputes
Increasing discrimination by factories against unions and continued poor wages in Cambodia’s garment sector have resulted in a rise in the number of worker protests, according to a report released yesterday by the International Labor Organization (ILO). According to its periodic synthesis report on working ...
City Defends Boeng Kak Project, Attacks Critics
The filling of Boeng Kak lake and the eviction of thousands of residents was necessary to root out the “prostitutes and terrorists” that were drawn to the area’s once-popular tourist zone, the Phnom Penh Municipality said in a statement yesterday. In a statement posted to its ...
Developer Plans Housing On Former Airport Site
The Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation (OCIC) is planning to develop a 400-unit apartment complex on the former site of the Ratanakkiri provincial airport, an official with knowledge of the project said yesterday. Ly Teang, Banlung City branch manager for Canadia Bank, whore investors are the ...
Railway Evictees Tussle With High Debt Levels
Adding to a growing body of research into the flaws of Cambodia’s $142 million railway rehabilitation project, a report published yesterday said soaring debt levels are crippling families forcibly relocated by the project. In the report by land rights organization Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), researchers tracked ...
Garment Workers Strike, Demand Higher Wages
About 4,000 workers at the M&V Textile factory in Kompong Chhnang province, which supplies well-known brands such as H&M and Gap, went on strike yesterday morning to demand a pay raise, a union representative said. Meas Sokhen, a representative of the Free Trade Union, said ...
Two Years In, Kampot Casino Downsizes
The Ha Tien Vegas Entertainment Resort and casino in Kampot Province along the Vietnamese border announced yesterday that it has sacked 500 employees and shut down its 130-room resort less than two years after it became the first casino to open in the province. The company said ...
After Demolition, Colonial Building Site to Lie Dormant
The owner of a site in Phnom Penh where a 19th century French colonial building was demolished last week said yesterday she does not have enough money to follow through on plans to build a replica in its place. Kang Gheck Nai said it had always ...
Police Search for Counterfeit Riel Notes in Prey Veng
Police in Prey Veng’s Peamro district are searching for a rice trader who paid a traditional healer with counterfeit money, and suspect that more of the fake bills could enter circulation. Neak Loeung commune police chief Chhin Sophal said the unnamed woman had paid 45,000 ...