News

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday assigned former Finance Minister Keat Chhon as the head of a newly formed committee tasked with researching the government’s capacity to introduce wage increases for civil servants and factory workers. The statement said that Mr. Hun Sen also spoke ...

A group representing public-sector workers has called on the country’s civil servants to follow in the footsteps of teachers and begin a peaceful strike to demand higher salaries. A statement disseminated Thursday by the Cambodian Independent Civil Servants Association (CICA), which claims to have 1,530 members, ...

The South Korean Embassy on Wednesday denied a news report that it had lobbied Cambodian military authorities to “crack down on protesters” in a bid to shield Korean investments in the garment industry, prior to Friday’s killing of five protesters and the wounding of more ...

Unions behind last week’s garment factory strikes said their members had largely gone back to work this week, although they have not ruled out resuming protests for a higher minimum wage later this month. Tens of thousands of workers went on strike starting on December 24 ...

Sok Sokan, son of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, has been officially named deputy secretary general within the Council of Ministers – a rank equal to secretary of state – according to November’s Royal Affairs publication released last month. Ek Tha, a spokesman for the Council ...

Tens of thousands of workers protested in front of the Ministry of Labor on Monday, after negotiations between labor leaders and the government failed to find a resolution to demands of higher wages in the face of a rising cost of living. Labor Minister Ith ...

As mass demonstrations by garment factory workers continued Monday, the government laid out plans to bring an end to the labor unrest within the next three days, including suing union leaders in the courts and mobilizing security forces to take unspecified action. Signed by Council ...

A rice trader on Monday filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Unit, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cabinet and three ministries alleging that officials in Kompong Cham province had wrongly fined her for an overweight truck after using improperly weighted scales. Saing Darlin had her truck impounded ...

Dozens of ruling party lawmakers have signed a letter calling opposition demands for a re-election or the resignation of Prime Minister Hun Sen an attempted coup. The letter, signed by 54 Cambodian People’s Party lawmakers including senior MP Cheam Yeap on Friday and released to the ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Monday visited thousands of workers from two special economic zones (SEZs) in Svay Rieng province who have been on strike over wages and working conditions since December 16. More than 25,000 workers from 36 factories in the Manhattan and Tai Seng ...

The Council of Ministers has nullified a 2009 law that set minimum prices on telephone calls, paving the way for regulators to reset the country’s telecommunications prices, which industry executives say are too high. The law, Prakas 232, which has been widely flouted, set a minimum ...

A union official at the center of a strike that started last Monday and involves an estimated 30,000 workers from two special economic zones (SEZs) in Svay Rieng province said Sunday that he has no control over the strikers, and does not know when or ...

Cambodia’s economy is expected to maintain the robust growth of over 7 percent this year even though the country is still trapped in political dispute and recovering from the aftermath of recent floods, senior officials and bankers said. But some analysts predicted that political trouble, coupled ...

The Ministry of Interior has approved the creation of three new districts in Phnom Penh following a proposal from City Hall to create five new districts before district and city council elections are held in May. Sak Setha, secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior, ...

The Vietnamese embassy fired back yesterday at opposition party leader Sam Rainsy’s claim that Vietnamese companies granted economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest are turning the area into a Vietnamese “colony”. On Wednesday, Rainsy visited the forest and claimed that CRCK, a Vietnamese firm granted ...

The percentage of Cambodia covered in forest has fallen from about 72 per cent in 1973 to only about 46 per cent in 2013, satellite image data released yesterday shows. A series of animated maps that Open Development Cambodia (ODC) produced from NASA satellite images detail ...

An official at the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia (TRC) said Wednesday that the body plans to review and possibly lower the current minimum price per call after it recently ordered the country’s seven mobile phone operators to abide by a law that sets minimum call ...

After nearly two years of silence on its draft NGO Law, the Ministry of Interior on Sunday said it was aiming to have the highly contentious piece of legislation ready for the Council of Ministers early next year and voted on by July. Meas Sarim, deputy ...

Cambodia has no control over Cambodian-flagged ships complicit in illegal activities on the high seas as the government sold the authority to register ocean-going vessels, under Cambodia’s national flag, to a company in South Korea for $6 million, a Council of Ministers official claimed Thursday. On ...

An organisation made up of current and former elected representatives from across Southeast Asia has called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths of two people shot by police during protests over the past three months. In a statement released yesterday, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human ...

Local communities that lost their land via economic land concessions to private companies are now being paid by those same firms to illegally fell the trees that once sustained their livelihoods, a group of five advocacy groups contended yesterday. At a press conference, the NGOs singled ...

Villagers and local authorities continued to argue over a 4-hectare plot of land in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district on Monday, a day after officials promised to measure and issue a title for it. District council chief Prak Channa on Sunday promised to issue a land ...

A group of Cambodian NGOs threatened on Monday to expose more cases of forestry crime involving businessmen and the police, saying they were unshaken by a defamation suit filed by top tycoon accused of illegal logging and land-grabbing. Representatives of the five organizations told reporters Monday ...

A land dispute between a development company and residents in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district boiled over late Friday night, with villagers setting fire to an excavator that they say company staff were using to raze a crematorium on the disputed plot of land. Villagers say ...