The Phnom Penh Post
Factories up but new jobs on the decline
Despite a noticeable increase in the number of factory registrations during the first nine months of the year, new job creation has declined, according to the latest government data. Figures from the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft released yesterday showed that 149 factories registered during the ...
Hor Kimsay
http://phnompenhpost.com/business/factories-new-jobs-decline
Drug arrests up, seizures on decline
The number of drug arrests, including those of foreign nationals, is up this year, but total drug seizures are barely over a third of what they were last year, say the National Police. ...
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/drug-arrests-seizures-decline
Long wait over: Two Boeung Kak protesters to get land
Two protesters from the Boeung Kak lake community are weeks away from long-awaited land titles after City Hall officials yesterday measured plots for them amid a small crowd of angry former residents. ...
Khouth Sophak Chakrya
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/long-wait-over-two-boeung-kak-protesters-get-land
Round two: Thousands sign up for final re-test
More than 68,000 grade 12 students have signed up for a second and final shot at the high stakes national exam next Monday, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport reported. That’s all of the students who failed – and most who failed to show ...
Laignee Barron
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/round-two-thousands-sign-final-re-test
Poll shows wide support for heavily monitored exams
Most Cambodians support the Ministry of Education’s crusade to end corruption on the grade 12 national exam, results from a “snap poll” by the Asia Foundation showed yesterday. The survey polled 500 respondents, including 100 current high school students, and 96 per cent were overwhelmingly in ...
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/poll-shows-wide-support-heavily-monitored-exams
World Bank in spotlight
As the World Bank considers supplying fresh loans to Cambodia, a new study uses the country as exhibit A for how the financier effectively sponsors corporate land grabs at the expense of the rural poor it purportedly helps. Three years ago, the bank’s own inspectors found ...
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/world-bank-spotlight
Land grab complaint filed at International Criminal Court
A British lawyer has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate “widespread and systematic” land grabbing in Cambodia over the past 14 years as a crime against humanity. The complaint filed in The Hague yesterday by lawyer Richard Rogers, who is officially representing 10 Cambodian victims, ...
Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/complaint-filed-icc
Neuroscience center opens at hospital
Cambodia launched its first full-scale public neuroscience centre at Calmette Hospital in the capital yesterday. The $10.8 million, 90-bed Centre De Neurosciences – complete with a neurosurgical ward and research unit – will seek to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay. ...
Taing Vida
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/neuroscience-centre-opens
Wage decision delayed
Minister of Labour Ith Sam Heng yesterday postponed his ministry’s Labour Advisory Committee’s decision on Cambodia’s garment sector minimum wage from Friday until next month, leaving some optimistic and others dubious. In the original schedule, the minimum wage for 2015 was slated to be set in ...
Sean Teehan and Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/wage-decision-delayed
MP vows again to settle land disputes
A ruling party politician has pledged to not only resolve a raft of land disputes, but push a policy of “on-site development” – redevelopment that does not remove people from their communities – over mass relocations. Speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 outside the National ...
May Titthara and Sean Teehan
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/mp-vows-again-settle-land-disputes
Villagers in the dark over dam relocation
Communities living close to the Lower Sesan II dam site in Stung Treng province have called on the government to publicly disclose what compensation they will receive. Logging continues as the area is cleared ahead of construction, but those who will be forced to leave their ...
Chhay Channyda
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/villagers-dark-over-dam-relocation
Preah Vihear villagers reject offer
The provincial government in Preah Vihear is pushing ahead with a compensation and housing scheme for villagers whose existing homes are in the way of a cultural preservation area near the province’s famous 11th-century temple. But the villagers are reluctant to accept the package, saying the ...
Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/preah-vihear-villagers-reject-offer
Dam promises are ‘a facade’
With regional consultations on Laos’s Don Sahong dam expected to commence soon, the developers are violating pledges to postpone construction, which is being undertaken by a Chinese company associated with several controversial hydropower projects, the Post has learned ...
Daniel Pye and Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/dam-promises-are-%E2%80%98-facade%E2%80%99
Poverty line $120, gov’t says
Workers in Cambodia’s capital earning less than $120 per month are living below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning’s own calculation. At a September 17 workshop on the garment industry minimum wage, International Labor Organization Cambodia national director Tun Sophorn cited Ministry of ...
Sean Teehan
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/poverty-line-120-gov%E2%80%99t-says
Migrants’ kids at risk: CDRI
Fuelled by poverty and debt, more than a quarter of Cambodian adults migrate, and, in the process, many are leaving behind their children, a new report finds. Part of a four-year research project on child labour, the Cambodian Independent Research Institute’s The Impacts of Adult Migration ...
Laignee Barron and Cheang Sokha
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/migrants%E2%80%99-kids-risk-cdri
Census deportations hit 142 in single day
Vietnamese nationals were deported en masse this week from Svay Rieng province, with 142 illegal migrants sent back across the border in a single day, as Cambodia’s nationwide census of foreigners continues, officials said yesterday. General Sok Phal, director of the Interior Ministry’s Immigration Department, said ...
Phak Seangly and Alice Cuddy
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/census-deportations-hit-142-single-day
New mall to open in late 2015
Global commercial real estate firm CBRE has put the call out for retail tenants for the new Parkson City Centre Mall, which stands to become the second foreign mall developer to open in the Kingdom in as many years. ...
Eddie Morton
http://phnompenhpost.com/business/new-mall-open-late-2015
City bans pair of marches
City Hall has banned street marches for World Teachers’ Day and World Housing Rights Day, ordering participants to confine their activities to Freedom Park instead. World Teachers’ Day and World Housing Rights Day occur on October 5 and 6, respectively. Planners for both expressed disappointment ...
Taing Vida
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/city-bans-pair-marches
Dam villagers demand titles
Fearing loss of land, about 150 farmers in Svay Rieng province yesterday marched to the provincial hall, filing a petition that demands land titles on their property. Many villagers in Svay Chrum district’s Chhoeuteal commune lost parts of their property in 2011, when a dam was ...
Pech Sotheary
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/dam-villagers-demand-titles
China firm proposes expressway for capital
A Chinese company has presented an ambitious plan to build an expressway over Phnom Penh in an effort to relieve traffic congestion. ...
May Kunmakara
http://phnompenhpost.com/business/china-firm-proposes-expressway-capital
Child labourer injuries rife
Over 85 per cent of child domestic workers in Phnom Penh are injured in the course of their employment, research into child labour released yesterday revealed. The Cambodian Development Research Institute and World Vision International are jointly examining child labour practices in the Kingdom, and the ...
Laignee Barron and Sen David
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/child-labourer-injuries-rife
Illegal mining op halted in preserve
Pailin provincial authorities are searching for a suspect who allegedly commissioned the excavation of a gold mine on land the protection of which is funded by the foundation of American actress Angelina Jolie. Provincial environmental police are holding three men at a spot where they were ...
Phak Seangly
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/illegal-mining-op-halted-preserve
Wanted: big trucks for a big crowd
With the spectre of potential garment-sector unrest on the horizon and emboldened communities protesting land disputes, the National Police is buying what appear to be the authorities’ first water-cannon trucks designed specifically to control demonstrations. In advertisements in yesterday’s Post and Post Khmer newspapers, the ...
Kevin Ponniah and Chhay Channyda
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/wanted-big-trucks-big-crowd
Property tax revenue for this year tops $1M
With the deadline for property owners to pay their dues passing today, Acleda Bank – one of two agencies collecting tax for the government – has received over $1 million in property tax payments this financial year. So Phonnary, executive vice president of Acleda Bank, told ...
Hor Kimsay
http://phnompenhpost.com/business/property-tax-revenue-year-tops-1m