Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue Party, wrapped up a three-day visit to Company 72’s rubber plantation in O’Yadaw district yesterday, during which he said he saw the firm’s employees logging inside thick, healthy forest. The country’s forest laws only allow concessionaires to fell forests inside their boundaries if degraded. …

Human rights groups and local communities have long accused rubber firms operating in Ratanakkiri of illegally encroaching on ethnic minority land and clearing community forests vital to the province’s minority groups. …

Although Cambodian courts are prosecuting an increasing number of cases involving violence against women, economic concerns stop many from reporting all but the most extreme abuse, officials said. …

As part of the action plan, the ministry hopes to expand a program of one-stop service centres currently based in Siem Reap and Kampong Thom provinces, which offer victims healthcare, legal and social consultation and career training. …

Contract farming is an agreement on agricultural production carried out between a farmer and buyers, which establishes conditions for the production and marketing of a farm product or products. …

Mao Thora, secretary of state for the Ministry of Commerce, said Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) provided €6 million ($7.7 million) for projects including contract farming and providing loans.  …

Ry Sarun appeared at Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday to answer questions about his claims that DM Group employees attacked his three children while they were attempting to stop them clearing the family’s land. …

Anti-trafficking NGOs told the Post this week that they have noticed an exponential increase in the number of trafficking complaints from fishermen trapped abroad.

In the past two years, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) aided in the repatriation of just over 100 Cambodians. But in just the first five months of 2013, the IOM has assisted in the return of 63 Cambodians – mostly from Malaysia, Indonesia and Mauritius. …

Two weeks ago, Taiwanese national Lin Yu Shin, 53, was arrested in Siem Reap on charges of trafficking Cambodians onto Taiwanese fishing trawlers off the coast of Africa.

According to the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies, Lin’s company – Giant Ocean International Fishery – had already been operating for several years before it obtained its Ministry of Labour licence in 2009, and was part of a bigger network that dealt with partners in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), estimates the company trafficked some 1,000 Cambodians. …

Oum Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of Labor, said the Arbitration Council currently receives all its funding from the World Bank’s good governance project and that more funds are needed to ensure the body–which has resolved nearly 1,500 industrial disputes, survives. …

Speaking after the conference, Mr. Mean said it was not the responsibility of the government to fund the body but that of the Arbitration Council itself. …

In the 10 years since funding for the International Labor Organization helped establish the Arbitration Council, it has resolved nearly 1,500 industrial disputes involving more than 600,00 workers. It also claims an 80 percent success rate in preventing strikes during negotiations.

Total aid from 1993 to 2012 amounts to around $10 billion, with the percentage of aid coming as loans steadily increasing. And a larger portion of that money is now coming from China, in a shift from the typical international aid patterns. …

Cambodia received a total aid package of $550 million in 2004, according to government figures. By 2012, that number increased to $1.38 billion, an increase of about 14 percent per year.

China has been behind much of that increase, but other aid comes from international donors like Australia, Japan and the US, as well as the Asian Development Bank and the UN. …

But donor priorities have shifted over the years. The health sector, for example, which was traditionally the most funded, has been surpassed by projects for infrastructure in recent years. Again, Chinese money accounts for the shift. Infrastructure aid has increased from $185 million in 2010 to $376 million in 2012. …

Yim Sovann, spokesman for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, said Chinese loans have higher interest rates compared to other donors, and the deals aren’t transparent.

“Some aid is useful, but some is not,” he said. Substandard road construction, subject to corruption and non-transparent bidding, for example, is not good for the country, he said. “Only one or two years after construction, the road is damaged again,” he said.

There are also those who argue that Cambodia is taking in too much aid. …

The deal was inked between director general of the National Television of Cambodia Kem Gunawadh and MCOT’s director general Anek Perm Vongsent under the presence of Cambodia’s Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith. …

He said that it was very important to exchange information. As the border conflict between the two countries has not been solved, both sides must broadcast only factual information and must avoid any provocative news. …

The collapse took place in a shaft that is typically mined by up to 60 people at a time, he [Rovieng Police Chief Sin Thorn].

Sin Thorn said he has warned villagers against mining there in the past, “but they never listen to my advice.” …

Romtum Commune Chief Prak Sokhun said rescue efforts are underway. Local police and others are trying to dig out the landslide that they believe is cutting off the exit to the shaft.

A district police officer who asked not to be named said there have been similar incidents of smaller scale at the mine in the past, some of them fatal, but Monday’s collapse has trapped more people that other similar incidents.

Cambodia and China signed a Protocol on the Exports of Cambodian Cassava to Chinese Market in December 2010, under which China allowed Cambodia to export its standardized cassava chips to China.

Teng Lao said cassava is the second agricultural crop in Cambodia and plays a very important role in Cambodia’s agriculture and economic development.

He said last year, the country grew cassava crop on an area of 337,440 hectares, producing about 8 million tons of fresh cassava. “About 50 percent of fresh cassava, 40 percent of dry cassava and 10 percent of cassava powder were sold to Vietnam and Thailand, “he said.”And Vietnam and Thailand re-sell those cassava products to international markets, particularly China.” …

Setsuko Yamazaki, country director of UNDP to Cambodia, said that currently, Cambodian cassava farmers, processors and exporters are facing enormous constraints such as price distortions in neighboring countries, lack of information on price and quality criteria of importing markets and lack of access to technology. “Though cassava has become the second largest agricultural crop in term of income, employment, hectares cultivated and exports, there is very little technical assistance support provided to the sector,”she said. …

Workers and union officials said an electrical short-circuit scared workers returning for the first time since the tragedy.

Hong Seng Lim, president of the Development Movement Union of Cambodia Labour at Wing Star, said 21 workers were taken to hospital, but their conditions weren’t serious.

“An electric short-circuit made a loud noise, scaring workers and causing them to run out of the factory.”

Wing Star, a supplier to Japanese brand Asics, allowed its 7,000 workers the rest of the day off, Seng Lim said. …

Mao Sangat, director of Solar Energy Cambodia, told the Post yesterday that his company saw increases of installation of solar power systems for families whose children worked abroad and remitted money to their parents.

He said that so far, there were no huge projects to equip solar panel systems in public places such as schools or hospitals in rural areas supported by NGOs, but solar panels were selling well to families in three provinces – Kampong Cham, Prey Veng and Svay Rieng. …

Yiang Tal, chief of administration of Rural Electrification of Cambodia, said Electricity of Cambodia (EDC) provided $4 million for the Department of Rural Electrification Fund (REF)  this year for providing loans to villagers and private electricity providers for implementing rural electricity development. …

He said that more than $1 million had gone to providing loans to private electricity providers to connect lines to rural homes, and all the connected families were required to pay back over two or three years without interest charges. …

In a letter submitted to the Inter-Ministerial Resettlement Committee, the ADB, the National Assembly and the Ministry of Economy and Finance yesterday, the villagers argued they had been unfairly locked out of compensation due to technicalities despite valid claims.

Luy Im, a representative of 23 complainants from Toul Sangke A, said she received only $100 in compensation after the front of her house was destroyed in 2011 to accommodate the works. …

The complainants, who include six households from Phum III and 65 from Tapeang Anhchanh, want the IRC to intervene because their compensation requests through one avenue of the ADB’s accountability mechanism have been rejected on the grounds that they were accepted via another. …

Provincial deputy prosecutor Sun Yeut, who took part in a multi-departmental raid that included police and Forestry Administration officials, said the seized luxury wood had been sent to the local forestry office but that no arrests had been made. …

Industry insiders say this is a problem, especially as reliable data are the base of reference when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) economic community is drafting its policies.

Analysts say data from the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) under the Ministry of Planning, such as the Economic Census of Cambodia, would be reliable, but statistics published by other ministries were not. …

“There still remains some uncertainty around the accuracy of the subscriber statistics coming out of the Cambodian telecom market,” Peter Evans wrote in his 2012 report about the Kingdom’s telecommunications sector. Therefore, he assumed a possible deviation of 15 to 20 per cent about his projection data. …

“When any nation falls behind in this process, it means that the region will not complete the organisation of its statistics. Government statistics are the base reference when the ASEAN Economic Community, the [East Asia Summit] and the ASEAN Economic ministers draft their policies,” a report on Capacity Building for Statisticians in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar from the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) said in 2009. “A lack of qualification of statisticians hinders the international comparability of industrial statistics.” …

The hall, which is part of Top World Garment (Cambodia) Ltd. in Kbal Koh commune but outside the main building, collapsed at 11:40 a.m., according to commune police chief Mao Rith. …

The accident comes only five days after another factory in Kompong Speu province experienced a ceiling collapse that left two workers dead. Government and factory officials yesterday said the Taiwanese-owned Wing Star Shoes Co. Ltd. was safe enough for staff to go back to work.

“Tomorrow, the workers will return to work so that the production chain will not be affected,” said Oum Mean, secretary of state at the Ministry of Labor. …

Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) election candidate Mu Sochua… said the CNRP is demanding a transparent inspection of Wing Star Shoes, as well as all the other factories in the country.

She also called for the prosecution of all the individuals who were involved in the oversight of the building’s illegal construction. …

The report from the bank and Rome-based International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), titled Sending Money Home to Asia, found that migrants from Asia sent a total of $260 billion in international remittances in 2012. …

“[B]ut high [bank] fees and limited financial services outside of urban areas are reducing the benefits of those remittances for millions of rural residents,” says a joint statement accompanying the report.

The report does not specifically outline how serious these problems are in Cambodia, which received $256 million, or 1.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), in remittances last year. Workers sending money home are charged on average 5.59 percent on remittances to Cambodia, the report says. ….

But the report notes Cambodia’s high saturation of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the provinces means that rural access to remittances is likely better than elsewhere.

MFI’s account for 26 percent of transfers to Cambodia, but the costs for these transfers average 10 percent of the amount being sent, the report says. …

Moeun Tola, head of the labor program at the Community Legal Education Center, said many migrant workers, especially those working in Thailand send money back through informal channels, which would not be included in the report. …

The import figures showed that from 2002 to 2010, Cambodia had imported a total of 137,908 tonnes of MSG, an average of about 15,323 tonnes annually.

While domestic MSG consumption is said to be on the rise, industry insiders say the decline of imports is not because Cambodians are turning away from the popular taste enhancer, but because a local packaging factory is feeding domestic demand. …

Garment workers are reporting that at least 10 people, including a pregnant woman, have been injured after a concrete platform collapsed into a pond at the back of the Top World Garment (Cambodia) Ltd. factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh at about midday today. …

According to the Vietnam Trade Office in Cambodia, Vietnam’s exports to Cambodia fetched over $1 billion while its imports were $253 million in the four-month period. …