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Deadline set for wage talks
The government’s minimum wage-setting group, the Labour Advisory Committee, is due to convene on Thursday to decide on the garment sector’s minimum wage for next year, according to a document shared by employers. The document, which was posted on the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia’s Facebook page yesterday, means that employers and unions will have to reach a consensus figure to send to the LAC during tripartite talks today. If a consensus fails to come about, the figure will be decided by secret ballot and then forwarded to the LAC, which holds the final say over the wage. Minister of Labor Ith Samheng yesterday said that a final figure would be announced before the Pchum Ben holidays next week.
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Gov’t, Factories, Unions to Vote on Minimum Wage Today
Government, factory and union representatives tasked with proposing a new monthly minimum wage for the garment sector will vote Wednesday to find a figure after once again failing to reach a consensus during negotiations in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. Labor Ministry spokesman Heng Sour said the working group, composed of 15 representatives from each of the three sides, made some progress toward a single proposed raise to the current minimum wage of $128, but not nearly enough to make an agreement appear likely. He said the employers upped their proposed raise to 4 percent, while the unions came down to 25 percent.
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Orphanage Director Goes On Trial for Abusing Boys
The closed-door trial of a former director of anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), who stands accused of sexually abusing 11 boys under his care at an orphanage he headed, began Tuesday with the testimony of a 22-year-old alleged victim, according to the defendant’s lawyer. Hang Vibol, 46, was the first director of APLE but left the organization in 2005 to work full-time running the Our Home orphanage in Phnom Penh, where the alleged abuses took place. He was arrested in March following a monthslong investigation conducted by APLE and charged by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court with multiple counts of indecent assault against minors.
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Australia seeking new destinations for refugees
Australia is actively looking to strike deals with more countries that can resettle its unwanted refugees as its controversial agreement with Cambodia continues to flounder. Peter Dutton, Australia’s immigration minister, told said yesterday the government was in talks with countries outside of Cambodia in a bid to find new third-party resettlement options. “We’re working and have been for a long period of time working on other bilateral options,” he said. “We have Cambodia available as an option, and it is difficult when we’ve got probably well-intentioned refugee advocates back here who are messaging up to these people on Nauru, saying ‘don’t accept any offer’.”
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Hope for ‘bomb threat’ student
Interior Minister Sar Kheng is seeking the legal means to engineer the acquittal of a student who threatened in a Facebook post to bomb a graduation ceremony he was scheduled to attend. The student, Tao Savoeun, wrote a letter to the minister on Monday, apologising and pleading for mercy. Sar Kheng read the letter yesterday, said ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak, and the minister is considering ways the student might be granted clemency. “Samdech [Sar Kheng] read the letter and he is considering this case, because he has not filed the complaint against the student,” Sopheak said yesterday. “He has not accused the student. We are finding a legal procedural way [to help him].”
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Cambodia: Human rights defender Vein Vorn detained
On 7 October 2015, human rights defender Mr Vein Vorn was arrested by the authorities and detained at the Koh Kong provincial prison, in southwestern Cambodia. He faces up to five years imprisonment as a result of his involvement in the construction of a communal meeting place for the members of the Areng Valley community. Vein Vorn is a human rights defender and representative of the Areng Valley community. Together with the grassroots movement Mother Nature, members of the Areng Valley community have opposed the proposed construction of a hydroelectric dam by the Pheapimex group and their Chinese partner Sinohydro. They believe that the proposed dam will cause massive social and environmental damage in the region and could lead to flooding in parts of the Areng Valley, displacing the Khmer Daeum indigenous population and destroying the ancestral homes of the valleys inhabitants.
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Habitat Day sees call to end evictions
Several hundred demonstrators yesterday marked World Habitat Day by gathering at the National Assembly to submit a petition calling on the government to halt forced evictions and guarantee housing rights. In the document, representatives of more than 20 communities affected by land disputes in Phnom Penh and the provinces urged national institutions “to achieve universal development and stop using the court system to pressure the people”.
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Police Block Marchers on World Habitat Day
More than 1,000 demonstrators from about 50 communities across the country gathered Monday to mark U.N. World Habitat Day and protest against widespread land and housing evictions, but found their march blocked by municipal authorities, who claimed the protesters posed a risk to security.
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Amid Reforms, Teachers Rally Over Pay
As the Education Ministry takes incremental steps to clean up the school system, more than 100 teachers rallied at Freedom Park in Phnom Penh on Monday to call on the government to increase wages as it attempts to stem bribery in the classroom.
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Hundreds of Minority Villagers Seek M’kiri Governor’s Ouster
A group of 900 Bunong villagers are seeking the removal of the governor of Mondolkiri, complaining in a petition that was submitted to the government Monday that he does not respect the rights of ethnic minorities in the province. Five representatives of the villagers traveled to Phnom Penh to submit the petition to the Ministry of Interior, the Council of Ministers and the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Our complaint demands that government leaders remove the provincial governor, Eng Bunheang, from his position because he has stifled the rights of indigenous peoples, such as not allowing us to march to celebrate indigenous rights day,” said one of the representatives, 25-year-old Kroeung Tola.
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Refugee detention to end on Nauru
The Pacific island of Nauru announced yesterday that it would end detention of asylum seekers and process the outstanding refugee claims of some 600 people held in the Australian immigration camp within a week. The decision, however, is unlikely to boost volunteers for the controversial Cambodia resettlement program, a Cambodian government official and Australian refugee activist said yesterday. Nauru’s Regional Processing Centre (RPC) – set up under Canberra’s hard-line, offshore-processing policy to hold asylum seekers caught trying to enter Australia via boat – will become an “open centre”, according to Nauru’s justice minister, David Adeang.
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Man Jailed Over Facebook Post Begs for Clemency
A former student who was jailed last week after joking on Facebook that he would bomb his graduation ceremony has posted a letter to his Facebook page pleading for mercy from Interior Minister Sar Kheng, who presided over the event.
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Deadline for Wage Negotiations Missed; Labor Ministry to Decide
The tripartite Labor Advisory Committee (LAC) on Monday missed its provisional deadline to decide on a new minimum wage for the garment sector, with employers and trade unions making little progress in coming to an agreement. Last month, Labor Minister Ith Sam Heng said he hoped the LAC would agree on a proposal for the garment sector’s new monthly minimum wage—currently set at $128 —by October 5. The Labor Ministry will make a final decision on the matter.
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‘Long-term’ key in garment worker wage negotiations
In June, William Conklin was appointed country director of the NGO Solidarity Center, which works to build consensus and capacity among Cambodia’s unions, provides legal support for union leaders and is lobbying the government to institute a national minimum wage across all industries. With the country’s garment unions this week announcing they would seek an industry minimum $168 per month in this year’s annual wage negotiations – significantly more than the industry is willing to agree to – Audrey Wilson spoke to Conklin about the potential outcomes as well as the need for industry accountability
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Cambodians March For End to Forced Evictions on World Habitat Day
Around 1,500 protesters marked World Habitat Day on Monday by marching through Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh and calling on the government to put a stop to forced evictions in the Southeast Asian nation. Evictees, monks, and activists joined the march to the National Assembly, or parliament, carrying cardboard cutouts of houses and shouting slogans, including “Cambodians need housing and land” and “We must have rights to live.” Outside of the Assembly, protesters also spoke about land tenure insecurity, inadequate housing, and the lack of infrastructure necessary to ensure good living conditions for people living in settlements for the rural and urban poor.
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Nine Vietnamese Montagnards Fear Deportation by Cambodian Authorities
Nine Vietnamese Montagnards who are seeking the protection of the United Nations refugee office in Cambodia’s capital said Monday that they fled their homeland last month because of political persecution, and expressed concern about possible deportation by Cambodian authorities. The ethnic Montagnard Christians are currently in hiding in Phnom Penh, where they arrived on Sept. 28 from northeastern Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province. Cambodian government officials have refused to register their names for them to be considered for asylum. One of the refugees, who declined to be named and spoke with tears in his eyes, told RFA’s Khmer Service that if Cambodian authorities deport the nine, they will face persecution in Vietnam. “We can’t stay in Vietnam [because] the Vietnamese authorities will arrest us and torture us whenever we practice our religion,” he said.
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Testy rebuke to UN on LANGO
The UN Human Rights Council on Friday passed a resolution on “Advisory Services and Technical Assistance” to Cambodia at its 30th session in Geneva, provoking a defensive response from the Kingdom over the body’s comments on the recently passed NGO law. Adopted without a vote, the resolution follows last month’s nine-day visit by the new UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith. Welcoming Cambodia’s participation in a periodic human-rights review, as well as progress relating to the Khmer Rouge tribunal, Friday’s resolution noted the Kingdom’s efforts to resolve land disputes, reform its judiciary and promote decentralisation of power away from the national level.
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Teacher: I made child strip
A teacher at Hun Sen Wat Thmey Primary School in Svang Rieng province has been summonsed on charges of sexual harassment for ordering an 11-year-old female student to be undressed as a punishment for reading errors. According to a complaint filed by the victim’s family to the provincial court in May, second-grade teacher Duong Sinet regularly ordered a male student to take off the victim’s skirt and underwear in front of a class of some 30 students. It was not until mid-August that the case was escalated into a court investigation when the girl refused to attend school.
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Two More Refugees to Arrive From Nauru
Cambodia will take in two more refugees being held by Australia on the South Pacific island of Nauru as part of Phnom Penh’s controversial resettlement deal with Canberra, Interior Minister Sar Kheng said Thursday, on top of the four refugees already here. Mr. Kheng made the announcement in an interview broadcast live by local television station PNN on Thursday, following the return of a Cambodian delegation that visited Nauru to meet the applicants and confirm that they were coming voluntarily.
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ACU Drafting Whistleblower Protection Law
The head of the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) said Thursday that the body’s jurist group had begun drafting a new law to protect witnesses and whistleblowers who come forward with information about graft and other crimes. Om Yentieng, chairman of the ACU, said the proposed law would not be limited only to those who approached his body with information, but would protect a wide range of individuals who assist authorities in investigations. Mr. Yentieng initially said the ACU had plans to draft such a law in November.
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