Khmer Times

Members of local conservation group the Forest Protection Community announced plans last week to use their own staff members to patrol an area of forest in Anlong Veng that could be decimated by illegal loggers within months. ...

The Council of Ministers’ secretary of state Tek Reth Samrach clarified a recent directive, which ordered all government officials in all ministries and institutions to get formal approval from the respective minister before meeting with or providing clarifications to parliamentary commissions or groups. ...

Thousands of students and fresh graduates gathered on Diamond Island this weekend for the 11th edition of the annual Career Forum. ...

A long-expected crackdown on foreign nationals lacking valid visas and work permits has arrived in the coastal region with a jolt that includes late-night raids on guesthouses, followed by arrests of those found overstaying their visas. ...

Cambodia cremated its former Senate president, Chea Sim, in front of Wat Botum early Friday morning. ...

Despite his jet-black hair, Sam Rainsy turned 66 in March. And it was clear in an interview with Khmer Times this week that the leader of Cambodia’s opposition is mellowing. ...

Cambodia’s Environment Minister Say Samal is a hybrid package. On one hand, he comes from a politically powerful family. This Saturday, his father, Say Chhum, is to be elected co-vice president of the ruling party. On the other hand, the 35-year-old Minister represents Cambodia’s rising, ...

Employees of Cintri, the city’s sole garbage collection agency, are feeling the effects of their job as they go about keeping the capital clean.  ...

As tension rises along an undemarcated border section with Vietnam in Ratanakkiri province, analysts say the government’s newfound toughness against Hanoi reflects rising Chinese influence here. ...

Cambodia’s garment workers will renew their campaign for a monthly wage of $177 next month, when talks start for a new minimum wage, labor leaders said yesterday.  ...

Child-protection NGOs and government officials are urging tourists and residents of Cambodia to stop giving money to street children because these well-intentioned gestures can have devastating effects. ...

A leaked copy of the contentious draft law on associations and NGOs is fuelling fears among its many critics that its purpose is to stifle criticism of the government by giving it broad powers to shut down both foreign and domestic associations and NGOs. ...

The Labor Ministry on Friday announced that formal negotiations to set a new minimum wage for the country’s all-important garment sector—now at $128 a month—will begin in July, reviving the same schedule for talks it used with unions and employers for the first time last ...

The government may recognize the more than 100 Montagnard asylum seekers in the capital as refugees, a senior official at the Interior Ministry has said. ...

Municipal officials and the police have started identifying and registering the city’s previously unregulated tuk-tuk and moto drivers, following a constant flow of complaints about them from tourists and business owners, officials say. ...

Cambodia National Rescue Party Chief of Information Meach Sovannara will return to the United States for medical treatment following a car accident last week, he told Khmer Times yesterday. ...

The recent ban on dredging sand from the Mekong has resulted in some people resorting to more innovative measures to obtain landfill. On the island of Koh Oknha Tey, also known as Silk Island, people pay from 7,000 to 10,000 riels per cart-load for delivery ...

Cambodia will begin to discuss the annual increase of monthly minimum wage for the garment and footwear industry for 2016 in July, according to a Labor Ministry’ s statement issued late Friday. ...

The spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Kiev Sopheak, said that there are still ghost workers in government offices, even though the Anti-Corruption Unit cracked down on this practice last year. ...

Meach Sovannara, the CNRP lawmaker who was let out of jail on bail in May, was involved in a car accident on National Road 5 on Thursday. ...

Cambodia welcomed some 1.6 million foreign tourists in the first four months of 2015, a 4.5 percent rise compared with the same period last year, Tourism Minister Thong Khon said Friday. ...

Land prices behind Ocheateal and Otres beaches have – in some areas – doubled over the last year, surpassing their previous peak in 2008, according to realtors there. ...

The three-star Toyoko Inn hotel is set to open next week, filling the gap in the capital’s budget-business hotel market. ...

The UK Government pledged to increase the number of scholarships to Cambodian students. They also promised to give more assistance to the Khmer Rouge Court trials and help solve the mine problem. ...