Scores of crying women who said they had been forcibly detained and girls who claimed to have received fake documents to conceal the fact that they were as young as 16-years-old were discovered at a centre owned by the SKMM Investment Group labour recruitment firm yesterday.
A group of 47 women told a Post reporter some 20 underage girls had been hidden at a restaurant to conceal them from police, while eyewitnesses outside another SKMM facility said they had seen recruits jumping out of windows to escape.
With tears pouring down her cheeks, 29-year-old Dam Nhean said SKMM staff told her that if she wanted to leave the centre to visit her baby, she would have to repay by double the US$800 loan she was given, reiterating claims made by many of the recruits.
“I have been in here seven months already, and I have two children. The youngest one is 17-months-old. I want to go back to take care of my son, but the company didn’t allow me to go out,” she said, adding she had been tricked by a broker into joining the firm…
While sovereign debt crises in Europe and a lagging US economy have yet to curtail cheap Cambodian exports, industry watchers said domestic producers should diversify their target markets to avoid a future slow down.
Exports saw a more than 40 per cent increase year-on-year between January and September, hitting about US$3.6 billion, according to Ministry of Commerce statistics.
Shipments of garments and textiles to the European Union increased by more than 75 per cent during the first nine months of the year compared to last year, according to the ministry. Garment exports to the US increased by about 30 per cent…
The Kingdom’s cassava exports soared 94 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2011, despite the recent flood devastation the agriculture sector has experienced, according to Ministry of Commerce figures.
The statistics showed that Cambodia’s export of dry and fresh cassava hit about 22,652 tonnes from January to September, compared to 11,656 tonnes in the same period last year.
The increase was due to growing demand from international markets for the versatile shrub, Ministry of Commerce’s Secretary of State Chan Tharo said…
Cambodia’s banks should be largely spared the heavy damages already seen in many parts of the Kingdom’s economy, officials said yesterday, though microfinance lenders will feel some impact.
Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon last week revised downward the government’s gross domestic products for 2011 as a result of the floods, to 6 per cent from an earlier 7 per cent. While there was potential for that constriction to also affect the banks, which loan to most sectors of the economy, officials tempered the concern.
The agriculture sector by far has seen the most significant impact from the floods, with about 318,900 hectares of rice, or 13 per cent of the country’s total crop, having been affected, according to National Committee for Disaster Management figures released last week…
Cambodian garment makers are filling orders for the 2012 London Olympics in what insiders say is the first time the country has supplied the Games.
ShenZhou International Group Holdings Ltd, one of China’s largest apparel exporters, makes shirts and other sportswear for Adidas that will supply the 2012 games.
Although Adidas would not disclose details concerning the Olympic contract, ShenZhou’s Cambodian factory produces more than 300,000 garments per month for Adidas, or about 25 per cent of the factory’s 1.3 million garment-per-month capacity.
Hidden at the back of the sprawling Vattanac Industrial Park in Phnom Penh’s Chom Chao district, and employing 4,324 Cambodians, ShenZhou is by many accounts a model producer among the Kingdom’s burgeoning garment sector. Still, worker contracts and production costs show signs of a market in the throes of development.
As an official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics in London, Adidas required suppliers of the Games to rank among the top 60 per cent of its supplying factories worldwide in terms of human and environmental safety and management effectiveness, William Anderson, head of Adidas’s social and environmental affairs in the Asia-Pacific region, said yesterday at the factory.
More than 200 residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak lake gathered outside Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday as four villagers who filed complaints after their homes were demolished by real estate developer Shukaku Inc last month responded to summonses for questioning…
China’s dam-building ambitions and alleged lack of transparency were front and centre yesterday during a roundtable discussion on Mekong River development held in the capital.
Representatives from the Chinese embassy defended their country’s record, claiming that China was “eager to participate” in regional cooperation mechanisms.
“We aren’t dominating this river,” embassy representative Xu Daizhu said. “We want to cooperate with other countries in this region, and we want to cooperate with each other to use the water resources in this region.” However, panelists accused the Asian power of irresponsible development…
A new lobster-breeding program could generate up to $600 million in revenues over the next five years, according to Nao Thuok, director of the Fisheries Administration at the Ministry of Agriculture…
Mr Thuok first mentioned the new breeding program at a meeting in Phnom Penh hosted by the Japanese Embassy and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) last week, government news agency AKP reported on Monday.
In order to implement the program, the Fisheries Administration needs between $4 million and $10 million in funds and is seeking donors to finance the initiative, according to AKP…
Industrial pollution ‘hot-spots’ have been identified in waterways in Phnom Penh, Kandal and Kompong Cham provinces following a five-month period of research as part of a UN-backed effort to encourage companies to adopt cleaner practices.
The hot spots – defined as a source of pollution where industrial waste can be discharged into a river directly or through sewage systems that drain into lakes, then rivers – were highlighted between May and September in a bid to promote eco-friendliness.
Sokchea Hak, a project coordinator for the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), said the hot spots were found “where most industry is located,” but that “water quality [in the area] is still in good shape.”…
Residents involved in a long-running land dispute in Oddar Meanchey province’s Anlong Veng district have been prevented from registering to vote in next year’s commune elections, village representatives said yesterday.
The village, Oambel, is not recognized by authorities as it forms part of a conservation area on state land, but villagers say they bought the land from officials at the provincial Department of the Environment in Anlong Veng town in various transactions since 2001…
Cambodia is unlikely to meet even half of its 2015 goal to export 1 million tons of milled rice unless export and production costs are greatly reduced and more private investment goes toward the agriculture sector, according to a new World Bank study obtained Monday.
The study, which was completed in July and titled ‘A more detailed road map for Cambodian rice exports’, said Cambodia finds it hard to compete in the world rice market, as milling and transportation costs are double those in Vietnam and Thailand. The end result is that rice-importing countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines are less likely to buy from Cambodian producers…
Depending on who you believe, the South China Sea could be the next Persian Gulf due to its untapped oil and gas deposits. It’s also a key shipping lane that the US Navy has guarded for decades. That’s why so many countries are sparring over remote islands and territorial waters in these waters…
Neither Cambodia nor Thailand are claimants to South China Sea islands. Their offshore energy dispute concerns oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Siam, which lies to the east (left of the map). These fields are the main source of feedstock for Thailand’s petrochemical industry. Cambodia has yet to extract any oil from its own shores (extravagant claims notwithstanding). One reason is that its undersea reserves are thought to be fairly modest and foreign oil companies won’t bite without a bigger field….
If anything, Cambodia has more at stake because it is wholly reliant on imported fuel and still represents a risky market for oil companies. Thailand has more options, and its jointly-adminstered gas field with Malaysia can probably be expanded. But it also needs to maintain a reliable supply to its downstream industries, so its needs are much greater than Cambodia’s….
Cambodia firm Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a Singapore-based company to develop a high-output rice seed factory in the Kingdom.
The cooperation between major investment firm OCIC and agriculture research company Smah Prum Royal International Pte Ltd is set to raise a capital of US$1 million to establish the factory, OCIC President Pung Kheav Se said at the Kingdom’s inaugural Cambodia Rice Forum yesterday…
Although a Thai minister claimed recently that delays in resolving the disputed overlapping claims area with Cambodia would result in an energy crisis, experts said yesterday the statement had been politically motivated.
Thai Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said last week Thailand would run out of gas in 15 years if the issue of the reportedly gas- and oil-rich area in the Gulf of Thailand was not quickly resolved, according to a Bloomberg report.
Petrochemical companies, which the minister said relied in part on wet gas from the Gulf of Thailand, could lose billions of dollars if oil and gas reserves were depleted, the report said…
But a number of regional analysts said the risk of an oil crisis in Thailand was slim…
Despite signs that demand is starting to come back to the real estate sector, an oversupply in the market has kept prices for commercial and residential properties in Phnom Penh flat over the past 12 months, according to data from Bonna Realty Group.
Prices for commercial property east of Independence Monument this month remained the same as in October 2010, averaging between $3,000 and $4,000 per square meter, while residential property prices along the riverside also stayed flat, going for between $2,000 and $3,500 per square meter…
Seventy-one out of 89 National Assembly lawmakers yesterday voted to approve the construction of a coal power plant in Preah Sihanouk province by a company run by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin and his daughter, and licensed the plant to sell electricity to Electricite du Cambodge.
The company, Cambodia International Investment Development Group Ltd, is a joint venture between MKCSS Holdings Co Ltd and Power Synergy Corporation, said CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap…
About 250 villagers who turned out in Preah Vihear province’s Srayong commune to protest against alleged land-grabbing by rubber firm Siladamich Company yesterday found themselves blocked by company security guards and police, though arrests threatened a day earlier failed to materialise, villagers said.
Villager representative Meas Ren, 50, said their path had been blocked by three company security guards, four police officers, two military police and Srayong commune chief Sat Ty, who told villagers they had no right to protest because the 454-hectare plot in question is part of a 9,000-hectare land concession granted to Siladamich…
As tens of thousands of families continue to struggle with ongoing flooding, delays are still hampering the provision of overseas aid, with some donors holding back on distributing funds.
China flew in two planes, laden with supplies worth $8 million, over the weekend and the South Korean Embassy yesterday announced $200,000 in aid after Japan pledged $325,000.
But beyond that, some donors appear to have their hands tied because the government has not officially asked for help, while others are still trying to decide on how best to deliver the aid…
Phnom Penh Municipal Court has summoned two residents of the Boeng Kak lake community to appear for questioning today and Wednesday in a defamation lawsuit filed against them by City Hall, a court official said yesterday.
The families of the accused have been left out of a plan to grant land titles to some 800 Boeng Kak households who were facing eviction to make way for a real estate project of Shukaku Inc, a private firm headed by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin…
Despite Prime Minister Hun Sen’s indefinite ban on sending Cambodian maids to Malaysia, two recruitment agencies continued to send maids there yesterday, according to rights group Licadho…
Recruitment agency Top Manpower put seven recruits on Air Asia flight AK 273 to Kuala Lumpur yesterday morning, while ILS Co Ltd put 18 women on board the flight, according to Licadho, whose staff talked to the workers at Phnom Penh International Airport.
Staff from the two agencies reportedly told Licadho that recruits who were in training programs were exempt from the ban, as they had already signed contracts…
