News
The great land giveaway
More than 2 million of the Kingdom’s nearly 18 million hectares of land – roughly 12 per cent – was given out to 225 private companies in economic concessions last year, according to an annual report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The concessions put 606 ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032355211/National-news/the-great-land-giveaway.html
Environment Minister Denies Hardship at Tourism Project
The Minister of Environment has countered a rights worker’s claim that villagers relocated to make way for a Chinese-backed mega-tourism project in Koh Kong province lack proper access to medical care. About 1,100 families have been forcibly evicted from their coastal villages in Botum Sakor National ...
60,000 Evicted in 2011 Alone; Majority From Phnom Penh
Nearly 60,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes last year alone, often being moved to inadequate relocation sites where they face unemployment and rising debt levels, according to a report by rights group Adhoc released yesterday. A total of 59,904 people from 127 communities were ...
Cambodia Surges Full-Speed Ahead With Land Concessions
The government has already granted roughly 300,000 hectares in economic land concessions (ELC) so far this year, according to data released by a local rights group yesterday. The figure, which amounts to 40 percent of the total land concessions granted in all of 2011, has ...
The rector versus the tycoon
The morning before the verdict was handed down at the Appeals Court on March 12, the mood among those working on the defence team for Heng Chheang and his wife Tep Kolap was almost optimistic. They, along with relatives of the couple and academics from Phnom ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032355213/National-news/the-rector-versus-the-tycoon.html
Trafficking, migrant issues in spotlight
The Cambodian government was strengthening its capacity to combat human trafficking by focusing on poverty reduction and was eager to work with other groups tackling the crime, Interior Ministry Secretary of State Chou Bun Eng said yesterday. “The issues of human trafficking and migrating workers are ...
Strikers fed up with delays
Striking workers planned to set tyres aflame today outside a garment factory that supplies JC Penney in the capital’s Por Sen Chey district, union officials said yesterday on the sixth day of the strike at Hong Kong-owned Win Shing-tex Cambodia Co Ltd. Ath Thorn, head of ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032355209/National-news/strikers-fed-up-with-delays.html
Boeng Kak Protesters Burn Effigies of ‘Bad Officials’
About 100 residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community took to the streets yesterday dragging straw and cloth effigies representing local officials who are attempting to evict them. ...
Capacity building: New schools pop up in rural areas
Children in rural areas are reaping the benefits of the government having completed 306 of the 580 schools it began constructing last year, senior ministers said yesterday. ...
Mining revenues questioned
The Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy earned US$1.52 million in non-tax revenues in 2011, a figure that an opposition lawmaker said was far lower than the actual revenues brought in on mining licences. The intake was more than 15 per cent higher than in 2010, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255187/Business/mining-revenues-questioned.html
ADB Won’t Pay to Finish Rail Project
Having already spent millions of dollars, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will not foot the additional $70 to $90 million in funds still needed to complete more than half of Cambodia’s railway rehabilitation project, an official from the ADB said yesterday. Toll Royal Railways, a joint venture ...
Food imports soaring to fill production gap
Cambodia’s food imports shot up 42 per cent year-on-year through February, a sign the Kingdom is still struggling to produce enough food to meet its own demand. ...
Project to curb floods
The Phnom Penh municipality is set to begin contruction on Monday for a project funded by the Japanese government, in order to improve both the infastructure of the city’s drainage system and its capability to handle flood water. ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255192/National-news/project-to-curb-floods.html
Kompong Cham Pepper Enjoys Healthy Trade in Thailand
Though less well-known than Kampot pepper, the price of Kompong Cham province pepper has increased by 44 percent from last year and is developing a following in Thailand, farmers and vendors said. With a total of 906 hectares of land dedicated to cultivating pepper in Kompong ...
Imports Fill the Gap as Domestic Silk Production Dwindles
Cambodia is importing hundreds of tons of silk from China and Vietnam to compensate for a fast-declining domestic industry, which is suffering due to producers opting to grow other crops instead or raising silk worms, according to silk producers. Men Sinoeun, director of the Artisans’ Association ...
Mondolkiri Minority Group Granted Communal Land Title
Residents of an ethnic minority village in Mondolkiri’s Seima Protected Forest on Monday became the first community in the province to receive a communal land title, land management officials said yesterday. About 500 indigenous Bunong families from Andoung Kraloeng village in O’Reang district’s Sen Monorom commune ...
Scores Released After Fishing Crimes Amnesty
An estimated 73 suspects and convicts involved in illegal fishing were released on bail in accordance with a blanket amnesty granted by Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this month, a court official said yesterday. Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the Ministry of Justice’s annual ...
Myanmar’s man on a mission
Cambodia, as ASEAN chair, could play a vital role in strengthening the international community’s perception that Myanmar has reformed and sanctions need to be lifted, independent observers told the Post yesterday. As Prime Minister Hun Sen described yesterday’s arrival of Myanmar president Thein Sein in Phnom ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255199/National-news/myanmars-man-on-a-mission.html
Cambodia to Send Observers to Monitor Burmese Elections
Cambodia will accept an invitation from Burma to send observers to monitor its historic April 1 elections, Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said yesterday. Mr. Kanharith spoke with reporters after a meeting between Prime Minister Hun Sen and visiting Burmese President Thein Sein, who promised that his ...
New year ringing in myriad concessions
The government has granted private companies the right to develop about 65,000 hectares of land in wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and on public reserves since January 1, data from a human rights group reveals. Ouch Leng, land reform project coordinator for the Cambodian Center for Human ...
Hundreds of Villagers Block Road to Protest Land Clearing
About 400 villagers in Kratie province’s Snuol district blocked national road 76A for three hours yesterday to demand that authorities release a villager who had been arrested earlier in the day for allegedly inciting villagers embroiled in a land dispute, villagers and a district official ...
Blows at capital protest
A union representative is accused of beating a rival over the head with a walkie-talkie during a factory protest yesterday in the latest burst of violence in one of Cambodia’s special economic zones. Bou Sokray, 25, a representative for the Coalition of Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255198/National-news/blows-at-capital-protest.html
Naga offers mobile massage to gamblers
NagaWorld Company, which is the sole licensed casino operator in Phnom Penh, has reportedly purchased 30 buses ...
Women sceptical of ASEAN
Cambodian women have the most to lose from the planned 2015 ASEAN integration, a coalition of more than 100 Cambodian women said yesterday at the Cambodian Women Forum. Because Cambodian women are so poorly educated, when the job market opens up, competition from other countries like ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255194/National-news/women-sceptical-of-asean.html