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US big brand boycott called for by workers
Some 100 workers, along with the president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, delivered a letter yesterday to the US Embassy in Phnom Penh asking Americans to boycott clothing made by Tai Yang Enterprises. Surrounded by protesters, CCU President Rong Chhun said that the group was ...
One man’s trash, another’s power
Phnom Penh’s mountains of garbage might be keeping the city’s lights on as early as 2015 if all goes according to plan, developers and city officials have said. Under a new proposal presented to Phnom Penh Municipal Hall last Tuesday, the Green Asia Global Corporation is ...
Farmers say officials displaced their jobs
About 20 families in Koh Kong province are accusing provincial authorities and military police of blocking them from farming on land that is part of a dispute with a Chinese development firm stretching back almost five years. The rice farms are in Botum Sakor district, which ...
Expansion of Int’l Airports to Double Capacity
Cambodia Airports will invest $100 million next year to expand the size of its airports in Siem Reap City and Phnom Penh and double the number of passengers that can pass through its two main hubs in the country, an official airport operator said yesterday. Emmanuel ...
Cambodia's banking industry sees 31 pct lending growth in last 12 months
Loan demands from Cambodia’s banking industry had surged by 31 percent in the last twelve months thanks to the growing business activities in trade, real estate, agriculture and manufacturing, a central bank’s senior official said Tuesday. As of June 2012, the kingdom’s 32 commercial banks had ...
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/xinhua/2012-07-24/content_6528755.html
Supporters pray for Sonando
While Mam Sonando lay in a cramped Prey Sar prison cell yesterday, sweating out a fever, some 100 members of the Association of Democrats burned incense and kneeled in prayer at the Preah Ang Dang Keu shrine, calling for the outspoken Beehive Radio director’s release. With ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012072457577/National-news/supporters-pray-for-sonando.html
Municipality Blames Trade Union for Violent Protest
The Phnom Penh Municipality issued a statement yesterday accusing the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions of violating their agreement when a garment workers’ protest on July 11 turned violent. Some 20 garment factory workers from the Tai Yang factory had marched to submit a petition to ...
ILO Launches Campaign to Combat Mass Faintings
The International Labor Organization’s Better Factories Cambodia program yesterday launched its One Change Campaign to encourage factories to implement changes that would reduce incidents of mass faintings. Maeve Galvin, a consultant for Better Factories Cambodia, said the campaign is supported by major international clothing brands as ...
Property rights threatened, NGOs claim
A draft agricultural land law threatens to eliminate property rights and effectively remove all limitations on the size of economic land concessions, a coalition of civil society groups said in a statement released. The draft of The Law on the Management and Use of Agricultural Land, ...
David Boyle and May Titthara, P. 1
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012072457586/National-news/property-rights-threatened-ngos-claim.html
Villagers No Longer Seen As Secessionists
Villagers locked in a land dispute in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district no longer pose a secessionist threat, and those remaining in the contested area will receive new plots of land on which to live, the district governor said yesterday. District governor Chhe Chhiv said that ...
Volunteers Move In to Measure Kratie Site
Two months after government security forces evicted hundreds of families from Kratie’s Broma village at gunpoint, residents who were permitted to remain there took their first steps toward legal land tenure. Scores of volunteers last week began to collect data of families in Chhlong and Snuol ...
Workplace injury rate rises
A spike in factory faintings contributed to a 65 per cent increase in the number of workplace injuries reported in 2011, a Ministry of Labour official said yesterday. Leng Tong, director of the occupational health and safety department, said the ministry plans to introduce specialist safety ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012072457581/National-news/workplace-injury-rate-rises.html
Supporters Pray for Mam Sonando’s Release
More than a hundred supporters of imprisoned Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando gathered at the Preah Ang Dang Keu Shrine in front of the Royal Palace yesterday morning to offer prayers for his release. Sporting shirts printed with photos of Mr. Sonando, the group lit candles ...
More confess to Kratie ‘secession’
Ministry of Interior officials announced yesterday that three more villagers accused of involvement in a “secessionist plot” in Kratie province turned themselves in and confessed their guilt on Saturday, taking advantage of the prime minister’s offer of immunity for those who agree to act as ...
REDD Forests Endangered by Loggers, Soldiers
Banteay Ampil district, Oddar Meanchey province – The families of Beng commune have new neighbors: a battalion of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) soldiers building a military base inside one of 13 pockets across the province aiming to be the first forest-based carbon trading scheme ...
Cassava plantings decrease
Cassava plantings in Battambang province dropped more than 18 per cent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2011, according to agriculture officials. The decease is a result of that previous year’s yield fetching a low price and farmers ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012072357551/Business/cassava-plantings-decrease.html
Garment strikers set sights for capital again
Strikers from Kandal province’s Tai Yang and Camwell factories, which supply Levi’s and Gap, will converge on the capital again today to keep pressing for seniority bonuses, Cambodian Confederation of Unions president Rong Chhun said. The 150 workers who remain on strikewill deliver a petition to ...
Questions over Laos dam
A decision on whether to build the Xayaburi dam on the Mekong River in northern Laos is a life and death one that will affect Cambodians downstream, according to Foreign Minister Hor Namhong. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Namhong said the controversial 1,260-megawatt hydropower dam has ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012072357562/National-news/questions-over-laos-dam.html
Land concession cancelled by PM
The Cambodian government has cancelled a 14,981-hectare concession in the Cardamom mountains granted to an Australian firm for a banana plantation, the conservation group Wildlife Alliance has reported. Wildlife Alliance has long lobbied against the concession in Koh Kong province’s southern cardamom forest on which Indochina ...
Two Arrested in Pursat as Further Evictions Loom
Two more people in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district have been arrested in conjunction with what local authorities are calling a secessionist plot, while provincial authorities threatened to demolish more homes if residents do not leave a disputed area, officials said yesterday. Deputy provincial court prosecutor ...
Ford takes 20 per cent of new car market
Before the big dinner with Hillary Clinton, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the leaders of Thailand and Myanmar on July 13 in Siem Reap, Tom Whitcraft of RMA Group, which owns the Ford dealership in Cambodia, sat down for an interview. Whitcraft said Ford has about ...
US looks beyond garments to deepen Cambodia trade
The biggest US trade delegation to Cambodia in decades joined Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here as the two countries look to expand their economic relationship beyond exports of cheaply produced garments. “On the economic front, there is much more room for us to grow ...
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/303886/us-looks-beyond-garments-to-deepen-cambodia-trade
Land Grab Claims Matched by Slander and Incitement Case
The Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court questioned four villagers among 12 summoned for questioning over a land dispute in Samakki Meanchey district, which has pitted some 80 local families against the owner of a private company they accuse of taking their land. While the dispute stems from alleged land grabbing, ...
Hor Namhong Rejects Blame For Failed Talks
Foreign Minister Hor Namhong on Friday put the blame for last week’s failure among Asean countries to release a joint communiqué on territorial disputes in the South China Sea firmly back on Vietnam and the Philippines. More than a week since discussions related to the territorial dispute between Asean’s members ...