News

A massive power outage Wednesday in Southern Vietnam brought rolling blackouts that lasted for hours to Ho Chi Minh City, the entire southeastern region of Vietnam and large sections of Phnom Penh. Vietnam’s state-owned Southern Power Corporation said Wednesday that the problem occurred around 2 p.m. ...

A 555-metre tower planned for Diamond Island is to go ahead, and expert engineers from China and Vietnam are studying the river bank and calculating the strength of the foundations needed to support the building. The building plan will not be changed and now the company ...

Cambodian milled rice exports are gradually lessening their dependency on a single market by expanding their shipping destination in Asia, a sign insiders say is good news for the industry. Kim Savuth, president of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Exporters, told the Post yesterday that milled ...

Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe’s second-biggest clothing retailer, said some H&M garments were produced without its knowledge or approval at a factory in Cambodia where workers were injured in a partial building collapse this week. A supplier of the Stockholm-based company placed two minor orders with ...

Cambodia’s insurance industry earned a total premium of 12 million U.S. dollars in the first three months of 2013, up 30 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the industry’s report released Wednesday. The main sources of the premium were from fire insurance ...

Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said yesterday that he would ask the government to cancel the land concession of a Vietnamese rubber firm in Ratanakkiri province he accused of logging and exporting wood illegally. Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue ...

U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi on Tuesday received a thorny reception from hundreds of students at a Phnom Penh university, who angrily questioned his impartiality and unfurled banners calling for him to end his work in Cambodia. Special rapporteur Subedi delivered a lecture to about ...

Helping women find better employment opportunities is key to ensuring they feel able to report rape and sexual abuse, government and civil society representatives said yesterday. Although Cambodian courts are prosecuting an increasing number of cases involving violence against women, economic concerns stop many from reporting ...

Officials are seeking expert firms to implement projects on so-called contract farming and the enhancement of the involvement of farmers’ organisations in paddy collecting and processing, officials said. Contract farming is an agreement on agricultural production carried out between a farmer and buyers, which establishes conditions ...

The father of three youths allegedly beaten by DM Group workers earlier this month said court officers yesterday threatened to imprison him if he did not agree to compromise with the company and drop the case. Ry Sarun appeared at Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday to answer ...

Their stories have become all too familiar – Cambodian fishermen enslaved on fishing boats after being promised lucrative jobs overseas. They’re also becoming increasingly common. Anti-trafficking NGOs told the Post this week that they have noticed an exponential increase in the number of trafficking complaints from ...

When a 100-metre-long section of a Phnom Penh garment factory crumpled in on itself like a cheap pup tent, Sen Sok district officials promised an investigation. The results of that investigation, which was to have taken place more than a year ago, in March 2012, ...

The Arbitration Council, an independent body that resolves labor disputes in Cambodia’s garment sector, celebrated its 10th anniversary yesterday, though officials expressed concern that funding for the body was due to run out in March next year. Oum Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of ...

Cambodia has seen huge growth of foreign aid and loans over the past two decades, but experts are beginning to question its worth—and what conditions might be attached. Total aid from 1993 to 2012 amounts to around $10 billion, with the percentage of aid coming as ...

The National Television of Cambodia and the Mass Communication Organization of Thailand (MCOT) on Tuesday signed a television cooperation agreement, focusing on the exchange of TV programs and information. The deal was inked between director general of the National Television of Cambodia Kem Gunawadh and MCOT’s ...

A gold mine shaft has collapsed in Preah Vihear province, trapping at least seven miners, officials said Monday. The collapse took place in a shaft that is typically mined by up to 60 people at a time, he [Rovieng Police Chief Sin Thorn]. Sin Thorn said ...

Cambodia launched Tuesday the second phase of cassava development project under the support of China and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Cambodia and China signed a Protocol on the Exports of Cambodian Cassava to Chinese Market in December 2010, under which China allowed Cambodia ...

More than 20 people fainted yesterday at the Wing Star Shoes factory in Kampong Speu province, where two workers were crushed to death in a ceiling collapse last Thursday. Workers and union officials said an electrical short-circuit scared workers returning for the first time since the ...

Officials and business people say solar panels are gaining in popularity in rural areas, where the power grid does not reach. Mao Sangat, director of Solar Energy Cambodia, told the Post yesterday that his company saw increases of installation of solar power systems for families whose ...

The occupants of 90 Phnom Penh households whose homes were partially or completely dismantled to make way for the Railway Rehabilitation Project partly funded by the ADB have demanded the bank offer them fair compensation. In a letter submitted to the Inter-Ministerial Resettlement Committee, the ADB, ...

Nearly three tonnes of illegally logged rosewood was seized during a raid on the home of a former military police officer in Stung Treng province yesterday. Provincial deputy prosecutor Sun Yeut, who took part in a multi-departmental raid that included police and Forestry Administration officials, said ...

Getting reliable statistical data remains a challenge for Cambodia’s government, as a lack of cooporation among the ministries and corruption still distort what is reality. Industry insiders say this is a problem, especially as reliable data are the base of reference when the Association of Southeast ...

The dining hall of a garment factory in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district that supplies clothes to U.S. brand Gap collapsed into a pond Monday, injuring more than 20 workers who were eating lunch, workers and officials said. The hall, which is part of Top World Garment ...

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, ...