ODC English Site
Mekong nations urged to protect migrant workers
The Mekong Migration Network yesterday ended a three-day symposium by urging countries in the Mekong basin to provide migrant workers with sufficient legal protections and to improve their working and living conditions. The network brought together 72 representatives of governments, academic institutions, INGOs, NGOs and migrant ...
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/aec/Mekong-nations-urged-to-protect-migrant-workers-30200972.html
Villagers Pray to Spirit to Delay Dam Construction
More than 500 villagers from Stung Treng and Ratanakiri provinces held a traditional sacrificial ceremony yesterday, calling on a local spirit to help in postponing the construction of a 400-megawatt hydropower dam in Stung Treng’s Sesan district. Siek Megong, Srekor commune chief, said the villages ...
Boeung Kak Evictees Ask City Hall For Better Compensation
About 100 women forcibly evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak neighbourhood protested outside City Hall yesterday asking for upgrades to the compensation they accepted under duress to give up their homes. The women said they were representing 739 of the more than 3,000 families forced out ...
Cambodia's garment workers confront multinationals
Since mid-January a group of illegally laid off Cambodian garment workers – mostly women – have been picketing the factory they worked in. Their objective was to stop the company, which closed down, owing the workers, collectively, about US$200,000 of unpaid wages, from removing the ...
Cambodia to earn $50 mln a year from cassava exports to China
Cambodia will earn about $50 million a year from exports of dried cassava to China through Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly said Thursday. Cambodia’s agricultural exports previously went through Vietnam and Thailand, amounting to between 7,000 and 8,000 tons a year. ...
http://www.thecambodiaherald.com/cambodia/detail/1?page=13&token=YjdjMmVlNGJmZDQ
Finance Minister Lauds Boeng Kak's Tax Bill
The Finance Ministry has sent a letter to well-known businesswoman Choeung Sopheap thanking her for paying her taxes on the highly controversial filling in of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake, and holding her firm up as an example of corporate professionalism. Though Shukaku Inc., which is ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/finance-minister-lauds-boeng-kaks-tax-bill-11863/
Thai Representative Meets With Koh Kong ‘Blood Sugar’ Families
Some 200 Koh Kong farmers locked in a long-running land dispute with two sugar plantations met Tuesday with a representative of the Thailand-based owners for the first time since the land dispute began in 2006. Khamrom Phochai, a Thai national and representative of Thailand’s Khon Kaen ...
Kampot land prices stable
Property experts said the land prices in Kampot province have been “stable” in early 2013 despite trading more actively than last year. Nuon Rithy, managing director at the Bonna Realty Group, said the trading of land in Kampot province is quiet and nothing changes much because ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013022861646/Real-Estate/kampot-land-prices-stable.html
NagaWorld Workers Reinstated After Protests
Following six straight days of protests by hundreds of staff at NagaWorld Casino, casino management yesterday agreed to reinstate four senior workers and said they would consider increasing the entire staff’s minimum wage. Between 500 and 1,000 workers had been demonstrating over what they said were ...
Foreign investment in Cambodia’s property rises
Property experts say foreign companies are coming to invest in Cambodia’s property sector, as they see the growth and potential of the Kingdom. Sung Bonna, director of Bonna Realty Group, said that the number of foreign companies in the sector has grown, and most are from ...
Preah Vihear Families' Land Issues Go Unheard
About 50 families living on the site of the long-discussed Preah Vihear airport went to the provincial hall yesterday to request that local officials reconsider their earlier decision to refuse them land titles on the grounds that the airstrip would soon be rebuilt. Villagers attended ...
Need for more transparency
GREATER transparency along the garment supply chain, from producers to buyers, is required in order to strengthen the accountability of retailers, factories and governments in protecting the rights of workers, Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said yesterday. Speaking in Phnom ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013022861656/Business/need-for-more-transparency.html
Rubber Firm Clears Kreung Land, Sparking Latest Complaint
Representatives of nearly 200 ethnic Kreung families living in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Chum district on Tuesday filed a complaint with local rights group Adhoc, accusing a Vietnamese rubber company of clearing their ancestral land, local officials and a rights worker said. Chhay Thy, provincial investigator for Adhoc, ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/rubber-firm-clears-kreung-land-sparking-latest-complaint-11876/
Cambodia Launches "One Tourist, One Tree" Campaign To Promote Green Tourism
Cambodia on Wednesday launched a “one tourist, one tree” campaign, aiming to promote green tourism and environment protection, Tourism Minister Thong Khon said. “We have already prepared tourism gardens in 11 provinces including cultural Siem Reap province, coastal Preah Sihanouk province and eco-tourism side in Kratie ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/travel/2013-02/27/c_132196175.htm
Cassava exports to China up, but production lags
Chinese-owned Avic International plans to export 8,000 tonnes of dried cassava from Cambodia to the Chinese market this year. According to Chan Saron, minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, there are currently 31 companies listed as exporting cassava to China from Cambodia, but only 17 ...
More workers rally at ongoing Naga strike
bout 100 chefs and kitchen staff walked off the job at the capital’s NagaWorld casino yesterday as a workers’ strike at the luxury entertainment venue entered its fifth day. More than 1,000 protesters — the majority of the casino’s workers — rallied outside the front entrance ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013022761629/National/more-workers-rally-at-ongoing-naga-strike.html
Co-op law will bolster agriculture sector: PM
WITH the passing of a law on farmers’ co-operatives, the government hopes to streng-then the country’s growing agricultural sector, Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a speech at the National Institute of Education yesterday. “In time, I believe that economic growth will be tremendous in rural ...
Anti-Graft Unit to Give Telecom Staff Anti-Corruption Education
The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has ordered staff at Telecom Cambodia to attend a meeting today in order to “educate” them about the country’s Anti-Corruption Law after they made graft allegations and held demonstrations against the firm’s director-general Lao Sarouen earlier this month, Minister of Posts ...
Barcamp Angkor

Lead Programmer Heng Huy Eng presents at Barcamp Angkor, with Editor Chunly Vicheth. (Sunday, February 24, 2012) (Photo: Project Coordinator John Weeks.) ...
Wide Gap Hampers Cambodian Wage Talks
A higher minimum salary for Cambodia’s garment and footwear worker is still not within sight after talks broke down Tuesday between unions representing the workers and their employers, officials said. The garment and footwear workers unions proposed to nearly double the current minimum monthly wage of ...
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/wages-02262013140215.html
Operations commence at 18MW Kirirom III hydro power plant in Cambodia
The Cambodian government has commenced operations at the 18MW Kirirom III hydro power plant in the southwestern part of the country. The facility will produce 78 million KWh of electricity a year and help the country reduce its power shortage crisis and dependence on oil-fueled electricity. ...
Charcoal prices rise in urban areas
Deforestation and Cambodia’s strong economic growth have resulted in an increase in the price of charcoal, an energy source the poor are dependent on, charcoal vendors say. The price of charcoal in Phnom Penh had increased at least 200 riel ($0.05) a kilogram compared to 2012, charcoal ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013022661597/Business/charcoal-prices-rise-in-urban-areas.html
Villagers File Complaint Against Vietnamese Rubber Firm
Twelve ethnic Tampuon families living in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district yesterday filed a complaint with the provincial land management department, accusing the owners of a Vietnamese rubber plantation of clearing their farmland, local official said. Tun Vantham, chief of Samuth Loeu village in Seda commune, said ...
Villagers may get land titles
Representatives of 171 Pursat families who claim to have been unfairly left out of the government’s land-titling process said they have reached a tentative agreement with the minister of Industry, Mines and Energy to continue farming on the Bakan district land they have occupied for ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013022661603/National/villagers-may-get-land-titles.html