The Cambodia Daily
Teenage Girl Shot Dead by Security Forces
Government security forces shot dead a teenage girl in Kratie province yesterday morning in a coordinated operation to arrest protesters locked in a long-running land dispute with a rubber company accused of stealing their land. The provincial governor said the joint forces opened fire to defend ...
Cedac to Export Rice to Germany Next Month
The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday it would begin exporting organic rice to Europe in June for the first time as part of a one-year agreement with a German-based equitable trade organization. “We’re looking to break more into the international ...
Charity Calls on UK Gov’t to Act for Cambodian Workers
A report by a U.K.-based charity has highlighted the low pay of Cambodian garment workers and called on the British government to intervene in disputes involving Southeast Asian factories supplying British retailers. Restricting Rights, a report published Tuesday by anti-poverty charity War on Want, looks at ...
Thai Seafood Factory Receives Glowing Review
Thai police investigating allegations of myriad labor violations at a seafood factory employing hundreds of Cambodian migrant workers have given the facility a clean bill of health. A report last week by a Cambodian NGO, the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), based on interviews with workers ...
US Packager to Open Plant in Sihanoukville
American packaging firm Crown Holdings Inc. announced Tuesday it would build a new can manufacturing plant in Sihanoukville that will become operational in the second half of 2013. Although it did not say how much the project was worth, the factory will produce 725 million 33 ...
Farmers Blame Gold Mines for Cattle Deaths
Villagers in Battambang province’s Phnom Proek district have called on the government to shut down several unlicensed gold mines being blamed for the deaths of cattle that drank from a pond contaminated by chemical runoff. “Three of the village’s cows died and two became sick after ...
World Bank Ups Cambodia’s Ranking Over Better Logistics
Cambodia has moved up 27 places on a biennial World Bank list that ranks the ease of importing, exporting and transporting goods in different countries. Cambodia was ranked 101 out of the 155 countries included in the World Bank’s report titled Trade Logistics in the Global ...
Future of Gold Tower 42 in Arbitration Court
The owner of the $240 million Gold Tower 42 project in Phnom Penh has entered into arbitration with the project’s builder, in a bid to get work started again after construction halted on the project in September 2010 due to poor unit sales and cost ...
Construction Permits Down, but Revenues Up
The number of construction permits issued by the Ministry of Land Management in the first quarter of this year came close to par for the same period last year, declining just 10 issuances to 489, according to ministry data released yesterday. Despite the slight drop, capital generated from those ...
Beeline Weighs Future Options in Cambodia
VimpelCom Ltd., the Russian mobile telephone operator that runs the Beeline brand in Cambodia, is reviewing its assets in Cambodia to decide whether it should stop doing business here or merge with another firm in the country, an official at the company said yesterday. “We will ...
Shooting Victims’ Lawyers Denied Site Visit
Lawyers for the three women injured in a Feb. 20 shooting at a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Svay Rieng province were prevented from visiting the site of the shooting, allegedly on orders from the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), a lawyer and ...
Supernatural Forces Enlisted in Land Dispute
Villagers in Kompong Chnang province have resorted to black magic as a means to even the odds with a long-running land dispute with a powerful company, KDC Development, holding a spell-casing ceremony on Saturday to curse the firm and the provincial court for allegedly colluding ...
SEZ Shooting Victims Called for Questioning
The Svay Rieng Provincial Court has issued summonses to question three women who were allegedly shot by a government official during a protest at a special economic zone (SEZ) in February, a court official and the plaintiffs said yesterday. About 20 eyewitnesses have already been questioned ...
Officials Took Mourners’ Names, Activists Say
Anti-logging activists have accused authorities of attempting to collect the names of roughly 400 people who attended a memorial service in Koh Kong province last week for the outspoken environmental campaigner Chut Wutty, who was shot dead last month. Although the memorial service at the spot ...
Hun Sen Points To Economic Benefit of Beer
Prime Minister Hun Sen encouraged the public to help the country by drinking beer during the inauguration of the new $60 million Khmer Brewery factory in Phnom Penh yesterday. “Don’t forget, [if you] drink one bottle or one can of beer, how much will the state ...
Opposition Protest of Power Outages Delayed by Officials
Kompong Thom provincial authorities have denied a request by the SRP to hold a peaceful demonstration to draw attention to severe power outages that have plagued the province for almost two months. Men Sothavarin, SRP senator for Kompong Thom province, said that his party had received ...
Officials to Grace NagaWorld’s Opening of First Vietnam Office
NagaWorld casino is set to inaugurate its first office in Vietnam on Saturday with high-ranking Cambodian officials set to attend. The casino’s owner, NagaCorp, has announced plans to draw more customers from Vietnam, though Hem Sopheak, a senior media executive for the casino, said all details ...
Shadow Cast Over Future of Forest Patrols
More than two weeks after the murder of conservationist Chut Wutty in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains, the future of his small NGO remains in doubt. But NGOs and communities who worked with Chut Wutty over the years say the larger fate of his ...
Fire Insurance Costs Soar for Garment Sector
Large payouts last year by local insurance companies to two garment factory owners and regional natural catastrophes have resulted in a huge hike in the cost of fire insurance for commercial premises in Cambodia, brokers said. Cambodia’s insurance industry paid out some $24 million in fire ...
Mfone Profits Cut in Half in First Quarter
Thaicom Public Company Ltd., which owns a majority stake in local phone operator Mfone, announced on Friday that they have devalued the company by about $1.31 million as profits in the first quarter dropped by half. “In an effort to reflect the fair value of its ...
Protesters End Roadblock Empty-Handed
Srey ambel district, Koh Kong province – A roadblock by locals in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat petered out after several hours in the dying rain on Saturday without the protesters winning any concessions from either the senator’s firm or ...
Questions Over Missing 10 Hectares of Lake
In order to pacify concerns that filling in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake would lead to flooding, it was claimed by officials that 10 hectares of the 90-hectare lake would be preserved to absorb heavy rainfall. Now, four years after sand began streaming into Boeng Kak, ...
UN Envoy Notes Human Costs of Land Concessions
U.N. human rights envoy to Cambodia Surya Subedi wrapped up his seventh mission to Cambodia on Friday, saying that his own assessments of land concessions confirmed that they are being unfairly granted and leaving many communities out in the cold. Mr. Subedi said that meetings held ...
To Gain From Asean Labor Market, Workforce Needs New Skills
Cambodia needs to improve the skills of its workforce if it is to compete and benefit from Asean’s plan for greater integration and the free flow of skilled labor within the region by 2015, Minister of Labor Vong Sauth said on Friday at the Asean ...