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Ten representatives from the Borei Keila community met with Phnom Penh police chief Touch Naruth yesterday to discuss whether their housing documents could qualify them for an apartment, a representative said yesterday. Chhum Ngan said Mr. Naruth asked representatives to furnish housing documents from 106 ...

If the government continues to grant economic land and mining concessions at the current rate, there will be no more arable land left in the country to give away within one year, a researcher from the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights said yesterday. Pointing to the ...

A government committee yesterday approved a draft sub-decree aimed at protecting the endangered Mekong River dolphin and will send it to the Council of Ministers within a few weeks. Among the provisions contained in the sub-decree is the creation of a 180-km-long conservation area stretching ...

The government yesterday moved to protect endangered Irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong River, announcing plans for a 180-kilometre-long conservation area that would stretch from the Lao border through Stung Treng province to Kratie town. Touch Seang Tana, chairman of the Commission for Conservation and Development of ...

Representatives from five communes in Koh Kong province engaged in a long-running land dispute with a private Chinese firm urged the government to issue them proper land titles during a press conference in the capital yesterday. Representative Chhai Beng Hout asked the government to instruct the ...

Nine companies have put in bids for the rights to dredge the lengths of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers and sell the sand for export, Water Resources Ministry officials said yesterday, noting that the dredging would be beneficial in terms of deepening the waterways. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday extended indefinitely a ban on commercial fishing in Tonle Sap lake, citing ongoing illegal fishing to the detriment of local villagers. The premier had first imposed the ban on 35 fishing lots in the lake in August, as a result of ...

Representatives of more than 300 families in Battambang province’s Bavel district yesterday urged government officials to intervene in a land dispute with provincial authorities and a businessman. Representative Thuy Ry said the 305 families had lived on the 3,638 hectares of land in Ampil Pram Doeum ...

The government needed better mechanisms to adapt to the effects of climate change, which could result in droughts and floods that cause deaths, destroy rice paddies and place an undue burden on the budget, a senior official said yesterday. Environment Minister Mok Mareth told a workshop ...

The Sam Rainsy Party has asked Prime Minister Hun Sen to verify the details of a proposed dam that could inundate about 10,000 hectares of protected forest, citing concerns that it would lead to rampant illegal logging and devastate a traditional habitat of Siamese crocodiles. ...

The Thai Ambassador in Phnom Penh has suggested that Cambodia form a special delegation to tackle the common – and often deadly – practice of illegal logging along the two countries’ shared border, the ambassador said yesterday. Already this year, 11 Cambodians have reportedly been ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that he would permanentlycance all 35 fishing lots on the Tonle Sap lake – which had already been suspended in recent months – and turn them into a conservation zone to protect the lake’s pressurized wild fisheries, on which ...

More than 60 Cambodian and international human rights groups and trade unions yesterday called on Cambodia and Malaysia to reach a bilateral agreement that would guarantee strong labor rights and working conditions for Cambodian maids employed in Malaysia. “The time is ripe for the Cambodian ...

Koh Kong villagers facing the loss of their land to a Chinese mega-tourism project held a news conference in Phnom Penh yesterday to appeal to the government for the right to remain on their property. Kith Ten, 54, from Kiri Sakor district’s Prek Khsach commune, ...

About 400 indigenous Lao villagers prayed and sacrificed chickens to a powerful local spirit yesterday in Stung Treng province, seeking supernatural help in halting the planned construction of the Lower Sesan 2 Dam, villagers and commune officials said yesterday. The hydropower projects, funded by Vietnam ...

The Kratie Provincial Court yesterday charged a truck driver with illegally collecting and transporting luxury wood after forestry officers last week confiscated 148 pieces of luxury wood totalling 31.2 cubic meters from his truck, which had been transporting the timber along National Road 7 ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday blamed illegal immigration for contributing to a current shortage in the Cambodian labor market but said workers could benefit from rising wages as a result of the demand for workers. Mr. Hun Sen said the shortage was hitting the agriculture sector ...

Beer promoters in Phnom Penh claimed Monday that they are being discriminated against for staging a month-long strike last summer, and their livelihoods are under threat. In July and August, hundreds of promoters for Cambrew Ltd – which produces and distributes Angkor beer – went ...

More than 500 ethnic minority residents of riparian communities in northeastern Cambodia held a peaceful protest Tuesday against the construction of a Vietnamese-led hydroelectric dam that will relocate them from their ancestral land. The villagers, who live along the Se San River in Stung Treng and ...

The Opposition SRP has asked the government to halt plans to proceed with the next hydropower dam slated for Koh Kong, saying that experiences with dams currently in construction in the province suggest the government has been unable to control the attendant illegal logging. In ...

Representatives from five communes in Koh Kong province are scheduled to hold a press conference in the capital today, appealing for government intervention in a land dispute with a Chinese development company that has spanned nearly four years. Lov Hov, a representative from Thmar Sar commune, ...

Another building is rapidly rising on the plot of land reserved for the tenth and last building promised to evicted Borei Keila residents. Behind 100 protesting evictees, construction workers continued pounding away yesterday at a steel structure that started coming up last week, along ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday said all of the country’s cities would compete with each other to beautify urban zones and attract more tourists in the newly devised Clean City contest. Nine Phnom Penh districts and 26 cities nationwide will be assessed on how clean ...

About 40 evictees form the Borei Keila community blocked a road in Phnom Penh’s Prampi Makara district for nearly two hours yesterday, protesting a letter written by municipal governor Kep Chuktekma stating that they had no right to state-provided housing. According to a copy of ...