Government

The U.S. has called on the Cambodian government to give fair legal treatment to the 13 women recently jailed for demonstrating against their evictions from the Boeng Kak area, according to a U.S. State Department spokeswoman. Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong met with U.S. Secretary of ...

Government officials are finally letting Ros Sokhet publish his newspaper, and he only had to change the name – twice. The Khmer Nation, called Revelation-Corruption News in a former life, and Anti-Corruption News in the life before that one, is supposed to hit newsstands today in ...

The Phnom Penh municipality defended itself for the first time this weekend against sustained criticism from rights groups over the jailing of 13 female protesters from Boeng Kak, blaming the backlash on the “insanity” of unnamed foreign provocateurs. SRP lawmakers, meanwhile, met with the women in ...

A representative of a factory that produces clothing for international clothing brands H&M, Gap and Levi Strauss warned yesterday that its buyers will place orders elsewhere if the strike for higher wages and benefits in its two factories continues. An official at the American Center for ...

The Anti-Corruption Unit has set its sights on illegal fees paid at the commune level and intends to stamp out a decades-old culture of bribery within the next four months, ACU officials announced yesterday. At a press conference, acting ACU president Chhay Savuth said that 22 ...

Eight months after the anti-graft provisions of the Anti-Corruption Law came into effect, the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) announced yesterday that it would start a widespread campaign to introduce standardized fees for government services in every commune office—though it will likely be months before any visible steps are taken. More than 2,000 ...

The government, this year, intends to transfer it’s budget to individual town district authorities, and to vouchsafe into their hands from 2013 onward, aiming to push forward decentralization, said an interior ministry official. The budget, of on average US$ 35,000 per year, is in process of being transferred to the individual 193 town-district authorities across ...

Cambodia will no doubt look to partners other than the US and the European Union to bolster its economic growth as those key export markets continue to struggle, a senior International Monetary Fund official says. One way in which Cambodia would forge new and growing relationships with higher-income ...

About 100 tuk-tuk drivers, motorcycle taxi drivers, vendors and other informal transportation workers protested against the high price of gasoline yesterday at the National Assembly, claiming the high petrol prices are cutting into their small profits. Vorn Pao, president of the Independent Democracy of Informal Economy ...

Revenues earned by the Sihanouk Autonomous Port for the first quarter of this year jumped 22 per cent year-on-year to US$8.3 million, according to figures released yesterday by SAP. Exports of the Kingdom’s rice, garments and timber, coupled with imports of textiles, electronics and construction materials, ...

Cambodian developers are betting that casinos can make the tiny Southeast Asian country a bigger draw for high-spending tourists. The nation of 15 million people has more than 25 casinos, but most are small affairs in rough-and-tumble border towns that cater to hard-core Thai, Chinese and ...

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed here Saturday to advance the comprehensive relations of strategic cooperation and partnership between their two countries. In a meeting, the two leaders pledged to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in all fields and to double the ...

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, ...

The Court of Appeal yesterday upheld a verdict sentencing the former Pursat Provincial Court prosecutor, Tob Chan Sereivuth, and two of his bodyguards to between 15 and 19 years in prison for bribery, illegal detention and extortion. Mr. Chan Sereivuth and bodyguards Ros Samnang and Chhit ...

Following a three-hour debate at the National Assembly, lawmakers passed a draft law approving the $2.5 billion the government spent in 2010. During the debate, CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap presented a 10-page document that he said justified the $2.5 billion in spending, which was 25 percent ...

An anonymous group on Saturday filed a corruption complaint with the Anti-Corruption Unit against senator Sok Kong’s Sokimex company’s management of the Angkor Wat temple complex. The complaint, dated March 10, alleges Sokimex has siphoned the majority of funds recouped from tourist entrance fees to the ...

More than two dozen fisheries experts from across the world have sent a letter of concern to the prime minister and Council of Ministers warning that if construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam goes ahead as planned, it would negatively impact hundreds of thousands ...

Borei Keila evictees who have been sleeping in stairwells near where their houses once stood said yesterday the Phnom Penh municipal authority had promised to help them find homes. Ka Rohanny, 35, a representative of the evicted residents, told the Post Kiet Chhe, deputy administrative president ...

The government has ordered all state institutions to start compiling a list of prices for all fee-based services so that individuals and companies can avoid informal payments, which were made illegal under the penal code last year, spokesman for the Council of Ministers Phay Siphan ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday said all of the country’s cities would compete with each other to beautify urban zones and attract more tourists in the newly devised Clean City contest. Nine Phnom Penh districts and 26 cities nationwide will be assessed on how clean ...

Health officials and workers are concerned about budget shortages for the treatment of tuberculosis in the Kingdom as new data reveals that prevalence of the disease has declined 37 percent from 2002, officials said yesterday. Mao Tan Eang, director of the National Centre for Tuberculosis and ...

Amnesty International yesterday called on authorities to immediately release the 30 women and children from the Borei Keila community being detained against their will at Phnom Penh’s Prey Speu Social Affairs Center. “Those people never should have been arrested in the first place,” said Amnesty’s Deputy ...

The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has launched an investigation into an October 2010 incident in which three RCAF soldiers allegedly opened fire on Forestry Administration officials who had just confiscated a haul of illegal wood, one of the officials involved said yesterday. An RCAF official, meanwhile, said ...

The Senate yesterday spent just 90 minutes ratifying the record $2.6 billion budget law for 2012, which will allow the government to borrow up to $1.1 billion from foreign lenders, according to a Senate statement ...