Residents of two villages in Kandal province say police are threatening to arrest them for filing a complaint about a company they accuse of failing to fully pay them for land allegedly bought from them almost 15 years ago.
Kuy Chanthorn, a resident of Kakab village in Ponhea Leu district’s Chhvang commune, said 134 people had thumb printed the complaint accusing Lay Heang Company of failing to pay them for 155 hectares of land it bought in 1997…
Another chapter in the long-running land dispute between development firm Phanimex Company and the Borei Keila community unfolded yesterday as 70 residents once again called on the district governor and Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene on their behalf.
At the heart of the dispute is a broken promise that has left 384 families without a home. In 2003, Phanimex told villagers being displaced by their development site that they would build 10 apartment buildings to house them on two hectares in Borei Keila. Eight years later, residents are still waiting on the final two buildings…
More than 100 workers collapsed at the Anful Garments Factory in Kampong Speu yesterday after the cloth they were working with was sprayed with insecticide on Sunday, a senior provincial health official said.
Or Vanthen, director of the Kampong Speu provincial health department, said 144 workers from the factory in Samrong Tong district’s Sambo commune were hospitalised but were not in danger and would be given a day off to rest…
Premium revenues across Cambodia’s insurance industry are expected to increase 20 per cent year-on-year in 2011, Mey Vann, director of the Department of Industry and Finance at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, predicted yesterday.
The Kingdom’s six insurance firms are set to accrue a total of US$30 million in premium revenue throughout 2011, up from last year’s figure of $25 million, he said at the launch of a reinsurance supervision seminar yesterday…
Heightened global food and fuel prices continued to inflate Cambodia’s market in September, and experts said flood damages would elevate costs further toward the end of the year.
Year-on-year inflation hit 6.7 per cent in last month, up 1 per cent from August, according to data released yesterday from the National Institute of Statistics.
The price of imported commodities and goods accounted for the most significant price increases in the Kingdom, the data showed. Petrol increased 19.8 per cent year-on-year, while meat prices climbed 20.6 per cent higher than their cost a year earlier…
PHNOM PENH — Hundreds of workers were hospitalised after falling ill on Monday at a Cambodian garment factory — the latest in a string of such incidents in the industry, police and union officials said.
Nearly one thousand employees at the Anful Garments Factory (Cambodia) Ltd in the southern province of Kampong Speu described feeling weak, nauseous and dizzy during their shift, Free Trade union leader Chea Mony told AFP.
“I am investigating the case,” he said, adding that many of them had lost consciousness in the incident, which happened after the plant had been sprayed with insecticide over the weekend.
Provincial police chief Keo Pisei confirmed that scores of workers at the factory had passed out, but he said the number was “less than one thousand”.
It was not immediately clear which clothing brand the factory supplies.
There have been around a dozen reported incidents of mass fainting spells in Cambodian garment factories this year.
They are mostly blamed on workers’ poor health, bad ventilation in the workplace or exposure to dangerous chemicals.
Rice futures jumped the most permitted by the Chicago Board of Trade, advancing to a one- month high, as flood damage to crops in Southeast Asia boosted prospects for U.S. exports.
Storms since September damaged 12.5 percent of paddies in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter, and crops in the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization said in a report dated Oct. 21. Floods and drought will cut U.S. output by 23 percent in the season that ends July 31, the government said Oct. 12. Prices have rallied 11 percent in the past two weeks.
“Thailand won’t be able to export as much, which will drive business to the U.S.,” Dennis DeLaughter, the owner of Progressive Farm Marketing Inc. in Edna, Texas, said in a telephone interview. “The U.S. doesn’t have very much rice yet, so it will pop up prices. We’re talking about some world trade shortages.”….
French engineering firm Systra is underway with a feasibility study to build a tramway from Phnom Penh International Airport to the Royal Railway Station, Governor Kep Chuktema said on Friday.
The agreement to study a tramway was first made between Systra and City Hall in July during a visit to Phnom Penh by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon…
The Kingdom’s fish exports declined 48 per cent in the first nine months of 2011, as a result of growing local demand, according to Ministry of Commerce figures.
The statistics showed that Cambodia’s export of fish totalled 1,099 tonnes from January to September, compared to 2,123 tonnes in the same period last year… – a result of higher local demand, according to Noa Thouk, head of Cambodia’s Fisheries Administration…
Sonatra Microfinance Institution, a joint investment between local and foreign investors, officially started operations in Cambodia yesterday.
A US$50 million loan package was signed during the ceremony on Thursday, providing Singapore-based EastWing Group and Japanese firm Grand Cooperation with a 30 per cent stake of the MFI…
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday led a delegation of businessmen and top government officials to join the eighth China-ASEAN expo and investment summit to be held in Nanning, China, from October 21 to October 26.
The Cambodian prime minister planned to meet his Chinese counterpart Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday to discuss the strengthening of bilateral relations and trade, delegate member and senior minister Srey Thamrong told reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport yesterday…
The latest United Nations assessment shows that the damage from flooding is far worse than previously thought, according to a report received by the Post late yesterday.
Drawing on data from three ministries as well as the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM), the assessment raises the number of households that have been evacuated by more than 12,000 – from 34,204 to 46,403.
The report, by the UN Disaster Management Team and the Resident UN Coordinator’s Office, also raises the number of households affected by flooding from 279,868 to 331,765…
The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies announced a temporary ban on the sending of all domestic workers to Malaysia amidst another underage trainee scandal – this one involving a firm owned by the wife of a senior member of Cambodia’s international police department.
On Monday, the Ministry of Labour gave recruitment firms permission to send already contracted domestic workers with travel documents to Malaysia, contradicting a blanket suspension announced by Prime Minister Hun Sen three days prior.
But ACRA President An Bunhak announced at a press conference yesterday that his association would effectively regulate itself – halting all transfers to Malaysia in the wake of yet another labour firm raid that involved allegations of forced detention and underage recruitment…
With few reforms made in the past year, Cambodia ranked 138th out of 181 countries for the second consecutive year in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ report released yesterday, a ranking that put it behind countries such as Syria and Sudan.
The report ranks countries based on 10 categories involving business regulations: starting a business, dealing with construction permits,employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business…
NGO Friends International launched a government-backed campaign yesterday to discourage visitors from participating in “orphanage tourism” in an effort to protect children from being exploited, organizers said yesterday…
Citing an unreleased report by Unicef and the Ministry of Social Affairs, James Sutherland, international communications coordinator for Friends International, said short-term visits to orphanages hinder children’s development and have a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing…
Thirteen construction workers have filed a complaint against the Banteay Meanchey provincial branch of T&P Co Ltd – the recruitment agency at the center of allegations involving illegal detainment of trainees – officials said yesterday.
The workers, who had previously worked illegally as construction workers in Thailand for seven years, filed the complaint on Wednesday with both the Banteay Meanchey provincial labor department and rights group Adhoc, accusing T&P of a “breach of trust” after losing money following a promise of documentation to work in Thailand legally…
Following a dip in 2009, new land disputes increased last year by more than 50 percent to 28, while the total number of ongoing cases is now 282, according to a report released yesterday by the NGO Forum.
Culled from media and field reports, each recorded land dispute case was then screened and verified repeatedly. Twenty-eight new cases were recorded in 2010 – an uptick from the 18 cases in 2009, but still significantly less than the 48 cases reported in 2008. Battambang, Banteay Meachey and Preah Sihanouk provinces and Phnom Penh saw the most disputes in 2010…
The Minister of Labor yesterday defended his ministry’s much-criticized interpretation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ban on sending maids to Malaysia, after it allowed about 3,000 young women to still be sent abroad despite the serious risk of abuse and exploitation.
Minister of Labor Vong Sauth said the ministry had not flouted the prime minister’s order because the order had only banned new recruitment of trainees, and did not include those already recruited for work in Malaysia…
Ruling party Senator Ly Yong Phat has kept a promise to stop his company’s dredging operations on Koh Kong province’s Tatai river, relieved business owners and residents living along the waterway said yesterday.
But provincial officials confirmed that as the senator’s dredging boats moved on to their new location, one of them hit an electricity pole, knocking out power in the provincial capital, Kemarak Phumin town, for an estimated four to seven days.
Janet Newman, owner of the Rainbow Lodge ecotourism resort, said Ly Yong Phat had stuck to an agreement he made with her and others to stop dredging by October 17, and even finished early, to the delight of tourism operators and, in particular, riverside communities…
Representatives of 32 families living in the capital’s Chamkarmon district staged a protest yesterday in Tonle Bassac commune, pleading with Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene on their behalf against the Thai Bun Roong company, which they say is forcing them to sell their land at below market value to make way for development.
Yesterday’s protest follows a letter that the residents, living on a parcel of land in Tonle Bassac commune known as T85, sent to Hun Sen last week. In that letter, dated October 12 and received by the Post yesterday, the villagers argue against a September Council of Ministers announcement demanding they either sell their land to the company for US$400 a square metre or resettle on company-provided lots in Dangkor district…
