The Phnom Penh Post
Public bus drivers rally
Around 40 drivers of the city’s new public buses protested on Saturday in front of the night market in Phnom Penh to demand a higher wage, but an official said they were “confused” about the salary agreement. ...
Sen David
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/public-bus-drivers-rally
Consult quickly: Door closing on Laos dam input period
Very quietly, with no official public announcement, the intergovernmental assessment process for Laos’s contentious Don Sahong dam is almost over before anyone knew it began. ...
Laignee Barron
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/consult-quickly-door-closing-laos-dam-input-period
Road safety funding to end
A major funder of road safety programs in Cambodia will not be renewing its grant for the country, sparking concerns that traffic deaths in the Kingdom will continue unabated. Bloomberg Philanthropies, run by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, is launching the second part of its Global Road Safety ...
Charles Rollet and Sen David
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/road-safety-funding-end
Seven-year sentence follows ACU arrest
A corrupt former high-ranking official at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications was yesterday sentenced to seven years in prison by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. ...
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
http://phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/seven-year-sentence-follows-acu-arrest
As PM ‘brags’, scammers try to strike gold
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday sang the praises of Cambodia’s first gold medallist in 44 years – suggesting Sorn Seavmey’s achievement was the “only thing Cambodia can brag about” – as the Kingdom’s Olympic Committee warned of bogus Facebook accounts in her name soliciting money. After ...
Taing Vida
http://phnompenhpost.com/national/pm-%E2%80%98brags%E2%80%99-scammers-try-strike-gold
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