Ceiling Collapse at Shoe Factory in Cambodia Kills 2
May 16th, 2013, The New York Times, Construction, Garment Industry, Industry, Infrastructure
A ceiling at a small factory making shoes on the outskirts of the capital of Cambodia collapsed on Thursday morning, killing at least two workers and underlining global worries about factory safety in poor countries.
Ken Loo, the secretary general of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, said that steel beams holding up a concrete-floored storage area at mezzanine height between two building had given way. In addition to the two dead, nine workers were injured, three of them severely, by falling pieces of concrete, Mr. Loo said. …
Keith Bradsher
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/world/asia/roof-collapse-at-shoe-factory-in-cambodia-kills-2.html?ref=todayspaper
Wary of China, Companies Head to Cambodia
April 8th, 2013, The New York Times, Business & Commercial Development, Economics, Foreign Investment, Industry, International Relations, Labor
Tiffany & Company is quietly building a diamond-polishing factory in Cambodia, a country popularly associated more with killing fields and land mines than baubles.
Some of Japan’s biggest manufacturers are also rushing to set up operations in Phnom Penh to make wiring harnesses for cars and touch screens and vibration motors for cellphones. European companies are not far behind, making dance shoes and microfiber sleeves for sunglasses. …
Foreign investment in China nonetheless slipped 3.5 percent last year, after rising every year since 1980 except 1999, during the Asian financial crisis, and 2009, during the global financial crisis. Still, at $119.7 billion, foreign investment in China continues to dwarf investment elsewhere.
By comparison, investment in Cambodia rose to $1.5 billion. But last year was the first time since comparable recordkeeping began in the 1970s that Cambodia received more foreign investment per person than China. …
Strikes this winter temporarily crippled numerous Taiwanese-owned garment factories in eastern Cambodia producing simple garments like bathing suits after Japanese factories moved in to make more sophisticated products like business suits and gloves — and offered higher pay and benefits. …
Keith Bradsher
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/global/wary-of-events-in-china-foreign-investors-head-to-cambodia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Cambodian Start-up Competes With India in Natural Hair Market
May 28th, 2012, The New York Times, Business & Commercial Development, Foreign Investment, Industry, International Relations
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — For an Internet start-up, Arjuni faces more challenges than usual.
The e-commerce site that sells hair extensions operates out of a five-story building here that lacks elevators and, sometimes, power. Employees typically have to travel to remote villages by motorbike or foot to pick up the goods that Arjuni sells. And the office floor is cluttered with piles of hair strands instead of computers.
But like many new ventures, Arjuni is harnessing the latest Internet tools like Twitter and social media to build a loyal customer base.
In just two years, the company, founded by Janice Wilson, has grown from a handful of employees to 80, and it now generates more than $1 million in revenue. The start-up is also slowly gaining market share from the industry’s dominant players in India and China, as well as retailers in the United States and Europe.
“We not only buy and collect the hair ourselves, but sell it directly to our customers. This makes us stand out,” Ms. Wilson said. “We’re small, but considered one of the top brands.”…
Ron Gluckman
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/in-cambodia-a-start-up-uses-the-internet-to-sell-hair/
Cambodia Home to Frenchman in Bo Xilai Drama
May 18th, 2012, The New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Throughout the drama this spring revolving around the dismissal of the ambitious Chinese official Bo Xilai and the investigation of his wife as a murder suspect, the most mysterious figure has been a French architect named Patrick Henri Devillers.
When Mr. Bo rebuilt the Chinese city of Dalian as its mayor in the 1990s, Mr. Devillers, who had married into a prominent local family, helped him lay out the new street grid and design city landmarks. When Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, set up a company in Britain in 2000 to select European architects for Chinese construction projects, Mr. Devillers was her partner. Adding even more spice to the intrigue, both of them gave the same address, an apartment in Bournemouth, on the southeastern coast of England. …
Those connections have produced a sometimes breathless swirl of international media coverage of Mr. Devillers for more than a month, made even more intense because journalists have struggled in vain to find him…
But the man who reluctantly and quizzically opened his front gate to an unexpected and unwanted visitor on a recent night in Phnom Penh belied the image that has been painted of him. …
Keith Bradsher, P. 1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/world/asia/figure-in-chinas-political-drama-found-in-cambodia.html?_r=1
Cambodia: Police Officers Kill Girl, 15, in Clash With Villagers Over Land
May 15th, 2012, The New York Times, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, Land Tenure, Social Concerns
Security forces shot and killed a 15-year-old girl on Wednesday during a clash with about 200 villagers armed with axes and crossbows in eastern Cambodia, in the latest of several violent evictions aimed at clearing land for development. …
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/world/asia/cambodia-police-officers-kill-girl-15-in-clash-with-villagers-over-land.html
In Cambodia, Lost Retreats Once Again Found
March 13th, 2012, The New York Times, Business & Commercial Development, Foreign Investment, Industry, Social Concerns, Tourism
Kep province – On a sunny weekday in Kep, a seaside village about halfway along Cambodia’s coast, the crab market was heaving. Women in straw hats and rubber boots stood knee deep in the surf shouting out prices, periodically darting into the sea to pull writhing specimens out of wicker baskets. Children of all ages ran through the stalls; it seemed as if the entire town had congregated in this one main square. Nearby, suspended over the water overlooking the South China Sea, rickety open-fronted restaurants were perched on stilts.
It was a scene that felt quaintly out of time. It was just life as it had always been and always would be. But of course this wasn’t true. Not far away, new bridges and roads were being completed; luxury resorts, casinos and golf courses mapped out; shopping malls planned. All this in an area of Cambodia occupied by the Khmer Rouge as recently as 1995. Like so many places that have dropped from, and re-emerged in, the traveler’s gaze, this area of southwestern Cambodia is in the midst of a now-familiar cycle.
First come the backpackers, lured by tales of simple coastal villages and untouched island beaches. Next come the pioneering hoteliers, establishing in-the-know outposts of taste and luxury. Finally the big money arrives and, with it, the big plans. …
But Cambodia has other needs, too. The average family makes the equivalent of only $2,100 a year, and development can put money in their pockets. On one of my last excursions I went to visit a resort that is attempting to serve the triple needs of tourists, locals and the land itself. Specifically, we headed to the Vine Retreat, a hotel and restaurant that opened a couple of years ago on a working pepper plantation close to Kep.
The owner, David Pred, found the plantation by Chamcar Bei village, now the site of the Vine, through his work with Bridges Across Borders, an organization that has, among other things, established a local school and health clinic.
Overlooking pepper fields, the property is lovely, with a few beautifully decorated rooms that cost less than $50 a night. After a meal of curry and fresh juice at the hotel’s organic restaurant, we visited the school, passing kids on bikes who called out to our toddler. Without the school, which opened its doors in 2007, Mr. Pred said, the children would be working on family farms.
Later, I spoke to him about the dual impulses of progress and preservation. “Aid groups alone are not going to be able to lift Cambodians out of poverty,” he said, …
Ondine Cohane
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/travel/cambodia-in-and-around-kep-open-but-undeveloped.html?pagewanted=1