News

Siamese Rosewood, which is illegally logged and exported from Cambodia in large quantities, will be protected internally as a threatened species following a decision taken in Bangkok yesterday. A meeting of the 177 countries party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild ...

Just 6 percent of 12,006 commercial freight vehicles passed recent road safety inspections, while an estimated 70 percent of car drivers bought their driving licenses illegally from private driving schools, a meeting at the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation was told yesterday. Many of the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that the government has no role in setting the minimum wage, as Cambodia is a market driven economy, and shot down unnamed people who have been calling for the government to significantly raise the country’s floor wage of $61. “For ...

Seventy-two ethnic minorities Banong families received communal titles to a combined 1,008 hectares of ancestral land in Mondolkiri province yesterday morning in a ceremony attended by Land Management Minister Chhun Lim. Communal titles were designed to protect the ancestral lands of the country’s minorities from outside ...

Preah Vihear province – The residents of this sleepy district, on the edge of the Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, grow rice, cassava and cashew nuts. But in a few short years, Chinese investors envisage that Rovieng will be rapidly transformed into an industrial town. ...

The Ministry of Commerce and bank officials announced yesterday that they will hold a meeting next month aimed at better facilitating rice millers’ access to credit. The move is part of the Asian Development Bank’s Climate Resilient Rice Commercialization Sector Development program to address food security ...

More than 40 families from Koh Kong province gathered on Friday outside Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Phnom Penh home to ask him to intervene in their land dispute with provincial forestry administration, village representatives said yesterday. According to one villager, 37-year-old Sam Sary, 47 families delivered ...

Authorities in Battambang province on Saturday summoned two villagers from Salmot district’s Ta Sanh commune after they refused to hand over money to officials asking for donations to feed students working in the area as part of the government’s nationwide land titling project. Heng ...

Cambodian crocodile farmers prefer selling young live crocodiles directly rather than raising crocodiles and selling their skins for export as they believe there is no market, despite officials encouraging crocodile farming for skin exports. Heng Chheng, a crocodile farmer from Battambang, has raised crocodiles since 1984. ...

A disguised shipment of nearly eight cubic metres of illegal rosewood worth an estimated $50,000 was snagged yesterday in a Forestry Administration dragnet in Siem Reap province after agents in Banteay Meanchey alerted authorities the shipment was headed their way, Forestry officials said. Siem Reap Provincial ...

With locals demanding dialogue with the Chinese firms behind a proposed multibillion dollar rail line to Preah Vihear province, an NGO report released yesterday highlights the dearth of information that has been made available on the project. Chinese company Cambodia Iron Steel Mining Industry Group (CISMIG) ...

AFTER finishing in the black every year since its launch in 2009, Cambodia’s flagship airline is forecasting a loss for the first time, in a situation that an industry analyst has described as “not necessarily typical”. Cambodia Angkor Air’s (CAA) loss is projected to span two ...

The government announced new plans for developing both transportation and rural sanitation at the annual meeting of the Ministry of Rural Development at the Chaktomuk Conference Hall in Phnom Penh yesterday. According to officials at the event, the ministry will be completing by year’s end a ...

The Council of Ministers has revealed that its new Airbus A320, meant for shuttling Prime Minister Hun Sen and a select few others around the world, is being leased from China Southern Airlines but refrained from disclosing how much the deal was worth. Last month, CPP ...

Thailand and Vietnam have called for strict controls to be placed on the international trade of rosewood in an attempt to prevent the luxury wood species from be­ing logged to extinction. Cambodia currently exports thousands of cubic meters of the wood to China each year, and ...

Villagers who fear eviction from their homes of 30 years in Kratie province travelled to Phnom Penh yesterday to plead for Prime Minister Hun Sen’s intervention. Fifteen representatives of 88 families who live close to Kratie Airport, in Kratie town’s Srei Padav village, said provincial authorities ...

The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) informed the government yesterday that their final offer in minimum wage negotiations with the country’s unions is $75 per month, $25 less than the unions had wanted. The $75 dollar figure, however, includes a $5 state-mandated health bonus, paid ...

Cambodia on Friday adopted the national policy and strategic plan for green growth 2013-2030, aiming at developing the economy with consideration for environmental and natural resources sustainability. It said the country has already adopted several legal instruments for the green growth implementation. Those included ...

The head of the country’s National Authority for Land Dispute Resolution on Wednesday said his authority was unable to resolve land disputes and that the responsibility for settling such disputes rested with the ministries responsible for handing out economic land concessions (ELCs) in the first ...

About 50 families living on the site of the long-discussed Preah Vihear airport went to the provincial hall yesterday to request that local officials reconsider their earlier decision to refuse them land titles on the grounds that the airstrip would soon be rebuilt. Villagers attended ...

bout 100 chefs and kitchen staff walked off the job at the capital’s NagaWorld casino yesterday as a workers’ strike at the luxury entertainment venue entered its fifth day. More than 1,000 protesters — the majority of the casino’s workers — rallied outside the front entrance ...

Amid reports that a second Cambodian has been killed this year by Thai armed forces while illegally logging in Thai border territory, officials had little detail yesterday on a government directive that is aimed at ending the international demand for rosewood from Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun ...

A mother of four, with the youngest on her hip, said she was not impressed by the palatial government buildings where Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Council of Ministers have their offices. Her own home is a wood-and-tin shack now partially buried under the ...

Reporting that the country had achieved better than expected economic growth last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday targeted a rapid expansion of the country’s rubber industry and predicted that almost 1 in 10 Cambodians would soon be working in rubber. “Agriculture continues to play ...