News

More than 500 trafficked Cambodian migrant workers were rescued abroad and sent home in 2015, a huge increase compared to 2014 numbers, though largely attributable to a handful of mass repatriations from Indonesia.According to a report by the Foreign Ministry, 573 workers were returned home ...

The Govern­ment has signed another Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the recruitment and employment of domestic workers and foreign labour, this time with Cambodia.Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot signed the papers with his counterpart from Cam­bodia, Ith Samheng, yesterday. ...

Three brokers were arrested last Friday after allegedly attempting to illegally smuggle nine Cambodians, including an infant, across the Thai border. Lured with promises of employment in Thailand, the group was attempting to illegally cross the border on motos when they were stopped by police ...

Three brokers were arrested and sent to Koh Kong court yesterday, charged with trafficking 17 Cambodians to Thailand with the intention of sending them on to another country, officials and victims said. According to Soa Samnang, 46, he and 16 other villagers, the majority from Andong ...

Three families lodged complaints with authorities in Banteay Meanchey on Monday, requesting that action be taken against a recruitment firm that sent their family members to work in Thailand on tourist visas, a move that subsequently led to their arrest. Leng Yen, a monitor with ...

Rem Vannak remains in poor health after enduring about two years of 21-hour days working for no pay on a fishing boat in Fiji, where he was beaten when he complained. Lin Yu Shin, who owns Giant Ocean – the company Vannak worked for that allegedly ...

Ministry of Interior officials held a closed-door meeting Monday with NGO representatives to contest Cambodia’s recent downgrade on the U.S. State Department’s Global Trafficking in Persons Report, which the ministry will discuss in a meeting with the U.S. Em­bassy this week. The annual report, released last ...

The U.S. has downgraded Cambodia in its latest global Trafficking in Persons Report for showing no discernable improvements in its efforts to combat human trafficking over the past year, the country’s first demotion in five years. The 2013 report cites an increase in the number ...

More than 800 street vendors and drivers of taxis, tuk-tuks and motorcycles working the border area between Banteay Meanchey province and Thailand yesterday marched through Poipet City calling for an end to the rampant corruption being carried out by border officials. Migrant workers who cross ...

Thousands of Cambodians cross the border via illegal checkpoints into Thailand every year. Some end up working in slave-like conditions on illegal fishing trawlers. Others work in factories while getting paid under the table. It is often a last resort fraught with danger and uncertainty and ...

A fresh complaint has been filed against a company already before the courts for allegedly running a human-trafficking racket that sent more than 150 Cambodians onto fishing boats as virtual slaves. More than 20 men who claim they were forced to work almost without sleep and ...

The government announced Monday that it will open a new passport office in the northwest province of Battambang, the first such office outside Phnom Penh. In a statement, posted to the Ministry of Interior website, the ministry said that the new passport office will serve people ...

Salaries which start at S$420 (RM1,020.76), and no placement fees from employers. These proposals were part of a document the Cambodian government sent to selected maid agents, as Singapore moves ahead with a pilot scheme to see how well Cambodian maids adapt to life here. The ...

Cambodian migrant workers sent home $256 million last year, according to a report from a U.N. agency and the World Bank, which was released in Bangkok yesterday. The report from the bank and Rome-based International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), titled Sending Money Home to Asia, ...

Cambodia has dispatched 4,779 workers to Thailand, South Korea and Japan in the first three months of this year, according to a report from the Ministry of Labor on Friday. During the January-March period this year, the country sent 4, 100 workers to Thailand, 678 workers ...

Cambodia’s construction sector is facing a massive labor shortage due to a recent boom in construction projects throughout the country and workers migrating en masse to Thailand in search of higher wages. In 2012, the construction sector expanded rapidly with the total value of approved projects ...

Cambodia Post, a state-owned enterprise with plans to list on Cambodia’s bourse, will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) today with the Thai Post intended to provide electronic money transfer services between the two ASEAN neighbours. The initiative hopes to tap the growing remittance via ...

Thai factories have opted to hire Cambodian workers under a memorandum of understanding between Cambodia and Thailand after the Bt300 minimum wage policy came into effect for Thai workers across the country. A total of 154 Cambodians – 118 men and 36 women – with work ...

With Thailand threatening to oust undocumented workers, Asean must do more as a region to protect its migrant workers, a leading rights advocate says. More and more workers are crossing the borders between Asean countries, and the region looking to lower trade barriers, so workers need ...

Thailand is warning it will expel 1.5 million illegal workers from the country, a move that could affect around 160,000 Cambodians. Rights workers in Cambodia say the migrant laborers deserve assistance from both Thai and Cambodian authorities to help them work and travel legally. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday criticized the Cambodian News Channel (CNC) for broadcasting an interview with an NGO worker who had claimed on air that the large number of illegal Cambodian workers to Thailand was due to high cost of obtaining a Cambodian passport. Speaking at ...

As the lure of Thailand grows increasingly attractive for cash-strapped and under-employed Cambodians, Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday made a public appeal for workers to stay in the country, simultaneously urging the Cambodian market to up its competitive edge. In a speech at the inauguration of ...

A migrant worker Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is back in the spotlight after Malaysia yesterday agreed to send a delegation of senior government officials to meet with their Cambodian counterparts tomorrow and Thursday. MoU talks are of mounting importance in the face of escalating evidence of ...

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 ...