The Phnom Penh Post
Maid tales continue to emerge
In what is becoming an all too familiar tale, another mother of a domestic worker who was sent to Malaysia has filed a complaint alleging her daughter is being exploited. Chea Si Yan said yesterday she wanted her daughter and goddaughter to come home because they ...
Villagers salute Chea Dara
A mother whose family face eviction from their home at Boeung Kak lake was farewelled at a funeral on Saturday evening, hours after her body was found in the Mekong River. Chea Dara’s body was identified by family members on Saturday in Samraong Thum commune, Kien ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112853004/National-news/villagers-salute-chea-dara.html
Kingdom's exports jump 44%
Cambodia’s total exports rose more than 40 per cent year-on-year through October, carried by strong growth in agriculture shipments. Total exports reached US$4.05 billion in the first 10 months of 2011 compared with $2.82 billion during the same period last year, an increase of 44 per ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112552966/Business/kingdoms-exports-jump-44.html
Budget pushed through
Cambodia’s 2012 budget passed through the National Assembly yesterday unopposed, without a single question asked and no parliamentary debate in a situation the government, opposition and observers all said was unfortunate. It took just over three hours for the law to be passed, 86 to 0, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112552980/National-news/budget-pushed-through.html
French financing: Cambodian MFI fetches $5m loan
Hattha Kaksekar Limited, one of Cambodia’s largest microfinance institutions, has received a US$5 million loan from a French development organisation in order to meet rising demand among its client farmers. PROPARCO, which is a joint venture between the French Development Agency and public and private shareholders, ...
Hun Sen rebukes World Bank
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday rebuked the World Bank for revising downward its outlook for gross domestic product growth in the Kingdom, claiming the bank’s projections could cause market panic. The premier also announced a new government projection of 6.4 per cent GDP growth this year, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112452947/Business/hun-sen-rebukes-world-bank.html
Police detain hotel unionists
Police detained two unionists and broke up a protest in Siem Reap province yesterday where workers demanded the owners of the Angkor Village Hotel and Resort respect a court decision ordering them to reinstate 67 workers. On October 26, Siem Reap Municipal Court ruled that the ...
Pay raise for garment workers
About 400,000 garment and footwear makers will get a US$5 a month raise starting in January, and the factories that employ them will receive a two-year tax holiday, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday. The $5 raise, from $61 to $66 a month, is intended to ...
Call to protect workers in Malaysia
The government was urged yesterday not to start sending domestic helpers to Malaysia again until it had a Memorandum of Understand with Kuala Lumpur guaranteeing protection of Cambodian migrant workers there. Ya Navuth, executive director of Coordination of Action Research on Aids and Mobility, also said ...
Renewable energy to power Takeo milling plant
A Japan energy company yesterday said it planned to build a rice mill fuelled by rice husks in Cambodia’s Takeo province. New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Kingdom’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) confirming cooperation ...
Banks offer millions to millers
Two Cambodian banks have set aside US$200 million for loans to bolster the Kingdom’s struggling rice-milling industry, officials said yesterday. The move comes as the Cambodian government has called on the private sector to boost loans to rice millers during the harvest season as a way ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112352914/Business/banks-offer-millions-to-millers.html
Missing in Malaysia: Father says concerns fell on deaf ears
The father of an 18-year-old girl who he said had been missing in Malaysia for more than a year, has filed a complaint with the rights group Adhoc against the labour firm that sent her there. Minh Ngi, 46, from Preah Vihear province, said yesterday the ...
Courts systematically used to ‘threaten’ villagers, NGOs say
The government failed to evaluate social and environmental impacts before granting economic land concessions to private companies, while officials and company staff used the courts to intimidate residents during land disputes, representatives of NGOs said at a conference in the capital yesterday. “The courts are not ...
Garment shipments jump 30% on low prices
Cambodia’s garment and textile exports grew by more than 30 per cent year-on-year through October, according to Ministry of Commerce data. The exports increased by nearly US$880 million, reaching $3.47 billion, the data showed ...
Rail line discussed for north Cambodia
A Chinese railway company may conduct a feasibility study on a 700-kilometre rail line in northern Cambodia, officials and local media reported yesterday. Officials from Nanning Survey and Design Institute Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China Railway Siyuan Group, discussed the study with the Ministry of ...
Family told to collect daughter's remains by recruitment agency
Another family has been asked to come and retrieve the remains of their dead daughter from a recruitment firm after she passed away in Malaysia, and they claim the agency that sent her threatened not to return her ashes if the family pursued legal action. The ...
Fugitive directors face seven years in prison
A director and a former director of recruitment company Champa Manpower Group were sentenced in absentia to seven years’ jail yesterday for detaining three female workers in Phnom Penh last year. Chaing Sinath, presiding judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, ordered that company director Sos ...
SMEs not yet ready for CSX
Small and medium-sized enterprises, which are expected to play a key role in the Kingdom’s emergent stock market, are far from ready to list, insiders say. Most important, many SMEs lack the standardisations and controls required of publicly traded companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2011112152859/Business/smes-not-yet-ready-for-csx.html
Toilet drive aimed at reducing disease, death
Nearly 10 million Cambodians and 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to a toilet on a daily basis, a World Toilet Organisation official said on Saturday. Sum Sokun, program manager for the WTO, gathered to celebrate World Toilet Day with villagers in the Ponhea ...
Floods abate, but villagers still isolated
Although floodwaters are receding, an unknown number of villages in several provinces remain accessible only by boat, and the extent of the damage has yet to be fully assessed, according to aid workers and the latest “situation update” from the United Nations Disaster Management Team. “In ...
Kingdom's three-year land rush
The government has granted more than 7 million hectares of land to private companies through concessions since 2008, with 222 private companies claiming more than 2 million hectares alone in economic land concessions, rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Ouch Leng, head of Adhoc’s land program, said ...
Milled rice exports climb, prices soar
Cambodia’s milled rice exports increased by more than seven per cent year-on-year during the first 10 months of 2011, while international demand for the grain drove up rice prices by nearly 200 per cent, commerce officials said. The Kingdom exported more than 136,000 tonnes of milled ...
Royal Group linked to new $2.2bn firm
A fertiliser company that has been approved to do billions of dollars’ worth of business in Cambodia, and is presumed to be based in the United Kingdom, is in fact affiliated with domestic conglomerate Royal Group, an insider has confirmed. Nitrogen Chemicals and Fertiliser (Cambodia) Ltd ...
Villagers protest for more flats
More than 100 Borei Keila villagers took to the streets yesterday to demand that Phanimex Company owner Suy Sophan honour a contract signed in 2003 that promised housing for 1,776 families in exchange for land. The protesters, holding banners, statues of the spirit and a pig’s ...