Mobile operator Beeline announced Friday the appointment of the company’s second new general-director in less than three months. Said Abbadi, who formerly worked as CEO of Newroz Telecom in Kurdistan, started as Beeline Cambodia’s new boss on July 17, the company said in a statement.
The change comes two weeks after Beeline announced the departure of Siddhanta Kothari, who left the same position after just two months in the job. …
A 75-year-old man living near the former site of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake was detained by police on Thursday after he was found collecting thumbprints from villagers for a petition calling for the release of jailed independent radio station owner Mam Sonando, villagers said Friday.
Chey Lay said he was visiting homes in Daun Penh district’s Srah Chak commune when six police officers approached him and ordered him to stop asking villagers to put their name to Mr. Sonando’s cause. …
Local authorities, including a heavily armed police officer, broke up a training session on land rights in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district on Friday, claiming the two groups had no legal right to hold such a meeting.
The move marks the second time in less than a week that authorities have moved to disband the land rights education program run by Adhoc and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR).
Chhim Savuth, project coordinator for CCHR, said that roughly 50 villagers had gathered for the training sessions in a private home in Batang commune’s Batang village, when three commune police officers, the village chief, the commune chief and the deputy commune chief knocked on the door and demanded that the meeting be halted.
The two rights groups ignored the orders and tried to proceed with the class, he said, but 15 minutes later, two additional district police officers—one of whom was armed with an M-16 assault rifle appeared. …
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday charged six people, including a provincial director of water resources and a commune chief, for their involvement in creating illegal fishing reservoirs in Kompong Thom province.
“They were charged with clearing a flooded forest for encroachment and illegally constructing reservoirs,” said Chan Soveth, deputy head of Adhoc’s monitoring program. …
In his first public meeting in weeks, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An on Friday met with a delegation of Thai officials in Phnom Penh and pledged Cambodia’s commitment to resolve a decade-old maritime dispute over contested maritime space in the Gulf of Thailand.
Speaking to reporters at the Council of Ministers on his first full day back in the country after receiving medical treatment in Singapore, Mr. An said he hoped that negotiations on a power sharing agreement over the 27,000 square km area of resource-rich sea would pick up pace. …
A new long-term project aims to boost fish stocks in rice fields. That was not a typo.
For years, rice farmers in Cambodia have swept up fish – as well as frogs, snails and other aquatic fauna – that make their way from streams, canals and floodplains into rice fields. They then sell the fresh catches on the side or eat them at home.
And now a four-year project funded by USAID is kicking off that reaches across four provinces in an attempt to replenish declining stocks, increase yields and provide an ongoing protein-rich source of food in poorer communities. …
Cambodia’s top economy builders are looking to bring back Thai investment that has departed the country since the onset of political clashes involving Preah Vihear temple in northern Cambodia.
Officials at the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) yesterday hosted 30 delegates from the Thai government in a bid boost the neighbour’s investment in rice processing and tourism. …
The number of new businesses registered in Cambodia through the first six months of 2012 reached 1,694, an increase of 10.86 percent compared to the same period last year, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Ministry of Commerce. …
The Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday postponed the hearing of a controversial case against a Thai-owned sugar company that more than 200 families alleged had taken their land for the company’s sugar plantations, lawyers and village representatives said yesterday.
Ny Sorphornneary, the lawyer for the families, said the court’s presiding judge had decided to postpone the trial because 15 people had recently withdrawn their complaints and the lawyers for the company were not present.
She added that they should have been informed about the Koh Kong Sugar’s lawyers’ absence. “I think the postponement of the trial really affects the communities and their living conditions. …
When they come to Koh Kong, they need to collect money to hire a car, so they’ve spent a lot of money and they have gotten no result again,” said Ms. Sorphornneary. …
Nearly 100 families who live in three villages in Por Sen Chey district’s Choam Chao commune near the Phnom Penh International Airport have been told by district authorities they have seven days to relocate and will be given no compensation. …
However, the residents are refusing to relocate without compensation, claiming that they had the consent of district and commune officials to build so close to the airport. …
Vatha, a 42-year-old construction worker, has been toiling for four years at numerous building sites across Phnom Penh.
He knocks down dilapidated dwellings and in their place builds houses and apartments that are bigger, better – and increasingly higher – as demand for residential property, especially rentals, surges.
It’s a dangerous job, Vatha says – especially without any protective gear.
“I don’t have any safety equipment when I work,” the father of three says, adding that he works at great heights, is often exposed to falling debris and uses power equipment daily. “My boss just tells me to be careful.”
In four years, Vatha has never had a pay increase. In fact, he has never even had a contract. …
On Saturday, the family of slain environmental activist Chut Wutty will commemorate the 100 days, or thereabouts, that have passed since his death in a case that remains unresolved even though six eyewitnesses have already been questioned.
The official story is that he was killed by military police officer In Ratana, who was then shot by Ran Borath, a security guard working for the logging firm Timbergreen, which Wutty was investigating, though it took investigators three attempts to settle on that version of events.
Somehow, none of the witnesses who were there at Veal Bei point in Koh Kong province’s Mondul Seima district on April 26 have said they saw the actual killing of Wutty – a divisive, headstrong activist who had many friends – and perhaps just as many enemies. …
A regulator for Cambodia’s telecommunications industry is expected to launch next month with the hopes of putting in order a sector that has seen little regulation during its short history.
Industry insiders have called the move positive but many questioned the body’s ability to rein in control without the backing of a telecommunications law.
The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has high hopes for the Telecom Regulator of Cambodia (TRC). Officials said the body will be divested from the ministry and will look to tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges. …
Sugar factories from Tay Ninh Province have spent over VND110 billion (US$5 million) to plant sugar cane in Cambodia’s Svay Rieng Province for the 2012-2013 crop, said the Tay Ninh People’s Committee. …
Vietnamese sugar producers have planted the crops in Cambodia as sugar cane in Viet Nam has faced stiff competition for farmland from other crops such as cassava and rubber. …
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday questioned six people, including a provincial director of water resources and a commune chief, over allegations that they cleared part of a flooded forest in Kompong Thom to illegally construct reservoirs on the Tonle Sap.
Earlier this month, military police confiscated a dozen excavators from a farming cooperative in Stong district run by a newly elected CPP commune chief in Samprorch, Peanh Poul.
He, along with provincial director of water resources Cheat Syvutha and four farmers—Meng Phally, Theang Thea, Thav Tum and Yuk Kimlen—were arrested Tuesday for their alleged illegal encroachment, said Brigadier General Sear Sambath, deputy chief of the national military police’s investigation and research commissariat. …
Amid a spate of garment factory strikes – including one at Tai Yang Enterprises that has lasted more than a month – Cambodia’s Arbitration Council yesterday said it wanted the industry to renew a memorandum of understanding on industrial action that has been in limbo since November.
“[The MoU] is something we would like the industry to come to the table on,” Arbitration Council Foundation executive director Sok Lor told the Post.
Strikes have increased significantly at garment factories since the MoU expired…
Rubber exports increased by more than 5 per cent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2011 as the price decreased more than 28 per cent, according to data received from Cambodia’s Ministry of Commerce. …
The data shows that rubber’s average cost was around $4,600 per tonne at the end of the second quarter of last year, but it dropped to about $3,170 at end of the second quarter of 2012. …
Khin Song, deputy director general at NIS, said the slow rise in prices was largely due to the slow growth of the world economy, which have affected prices on international market and in the region. …
Consumer prices in Phnom Penh grew just 1.8 percent year-on-year in the month of June, the lowest increase in almost two years, as food and gas prices remained stable, according to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Planning.
In its monthly inflation report, the ministry said that the price of gas dropped 2.7 percent in June compared to the same month in 2011, while the commodity dropped 6.3 percent from May to June.
Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices increased by just 2.3 percent over the 12-month period. Rice increased 4.4 percent year-to-year, while milk, cheese and eggs increased by 4.1 percent. The price of meat increased 2.5 percent over the same period. …
Local police in Ratanakkiri province’s Veun Sai district yesterday tried to shut down a community meeting in which villagers were being educated about land rights, because it was being held without permission, rights workers said.
According to Pen Bonnar, provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc, two Phnom Kuk commune police arrived at the house in which the meeting attended by 20 villagers was being held, and demanded it be shut down on orders from district authorities.
Mr. Bonnar then called commune police chief Chea Sok in an effort to defuse the situation, but Mr. Sok allegedly reiterated the orders that the meeting be shut down. …
