The Phnom Penh Post

The economic fallout from garment worker protests and the industry’s response is expected to cost the key sector millions of dollars while tarnishing the country’s reputation among international buyers, interviews with suppliers and figures from previous periods of labour unrest show. Disputes over wages came to ...

Election monitor Comfrel released its final assessment of the 2013 national elections yesterday, detailing a raft of irregularities, while at the same time acknowledging that the opposition’s claims of having won the election were undermined by its reluctance to provide concrete evidence. The 147-page report makes ...

Ethnic minority groups in Ratanakkiri province are facing widespread human rights violations, land loss and the exploitation of their natural resources, an indigenous peoples conference was told yesterday. More than 300 villagers from the province’s Tum Poun, Kreng, Prov, Kavet, Jarai, Kachok and Lun communities hosted ...

High-ranking members of the royalist Funcinpec party have said they are set to file a court complaint against the party’s senior leaders for allegedly attempting to sell the party’s headquarters for their own personal gain. Sok Sa Vann, a member of the party’s steering committee, maintained ...

The extent of the devastation of Cambodia’s forests was brought into sharp relief as 2013 drew to a close, with a series of detailed maps and satellite data released by NGOs showing the drastic depletion of the Kingdom’s woodland ecosystems. Images released by Open Development Cambodia ...

Finding out why women’s voices are not being listened to is imperative to increasing the proportion of female political representation in Cambodia, a meeting heard yesterday. The Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP) – which is made up of 12 organisations – hosted discussions in ...

Dozens of ruling party lawmakers have signed a letter calling opposition demands for a re-election or the resignation of Prime Minister Hun Sen an attempted coup. The letter, signed by 54 Cambodian People’s Party lawmakers including senior MP Cheam Yeap on Friday and released to the ...

The French Agency for Development will provide $26 million in loans to the Cambodian government to rehabilitate irrigation systems across three provinces in the northwest. Speaking at the signing ceremony for the deal yesterday, Aun Pornmoniroth, the Minister of Economy and Finance, said the new systems ...

The Asean Economic Community (AEC) will cut red tape and allow freer trade between the bloc’s 10 member states. But many companies in the region aren’t even aware of the AEC blueprint, a sobering report from the Asia Development Bank has found. The bank also ...

A crackdown on illegal logging in Mondulkiri has yielded more than 50 cubic metres of luxury wood found submerged in a canal and stashed throughout the forest. ...

When unions and the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) signed a memorandum of understanding in October last year, both sides were confident strikes in the Kingdom’s biggest export sector could be kept to a minimum. Not counting December, GMAC has recorded 131 strikes this ...

Ahead of today’s Ministry of Labour announcement of a minimum wage increase for Cambodia’s apparel sector, opposition leader Sam Rainsy yesterday urged striking workers in Svay Rieng province to hold out until their monthly salary is raised to $160. “[Garment] workers should not return to work ...

About 1,000 workers at a Kandal province garment factory walked off the job on Saturday after management there fired eight employees who attempted to start a new union. ...

A group of local journalists in Preah Vihear province allege, in a complaint filed with a rights group, that authorities are involved in the sale of illegally logged timber. Seven journalists, who asked that their names and respective outlets not be identified for fear of retribution ...

To capitalise on a rising demand for pork, a state-owned Chinese company is pouring $200 million into ruling party senator and tycoon Mong Reththy’s pig farm in Preah Sihanouk province. ...

Cambodia’s Anti-corruption Unit has criticised the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for not sending them the findings of its investigation into widespread corruption in health grants. Chhay Savuth, vice-president of the Anti-Corruption Unit, said he had contacted the Global Fund to request evidence ...

A pilot cashew-peeling factory in Kampong Thom province aims to make business easier for farmers who have traditionally relied upon sending their raw harvest elsewhere for processing. With $130,000 from the Asia Development Bank, the building went up in May on 3,600 square metres in Kampong ...

Security guards from a Chinese development firm in Koh Kong province have allegedly prevented civil society groups from gathering data they planned to use for a petition asking for compensation for evictees. ...

A new program launched yesterday has its sights set on ending the endemic problem of sexual harassment against women in the workplace. A ceremony at the Hotel Cambodiana marked the start of Safe Workplaces, Safer Communities, a project run by CARE Cambodia. The three-year program, which will ...

Cambodia’s nine phone service operators plan to establish an independent body to debate issues within the industry, according to a statement yesterday from the Telecommunications Regulator of Cambodia (TRC). Forming the Association of Telecommunications Operators in Cambodia, or the ATC for short, was agreed upon in ...

A coalition of NGOs yesterday implored Prime Minister Hun Sen to shelve the government’s plans for the Stung Cheay Areng hydropower dam in Koh Kong province and instead turn the wilderness area in question into an eco-tourism site. ...

The constant hum of chainsaws almost drowned out Buddhist monk Sam Kim Sath, 65, as he stood this week in a wildlife sanctuary on Oral Mountain, Cambodia’s highest peak. Forest in the Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary, in the eastern part of the Cardamoms, is being “obliterated” ...

At least four people were injured, one seriously, after Thai soldiers shot them as they allegedly illegally logged the Thai side of the Preah Vihear border on Wednesday. The injured men were part of a group of eight from Preah Vihear province’s Choam Ksan district, provincial ...

The amount of money to be allocated to commune-, district- and province-level governments is slated to rise next year in accordance with the government’s long-gestating attempts at decentralising its power. Provincial- and capital-level funding will rise to about 640.8 billion riel, with 237.2 billion riel ...