The Cambodia Daily

Orphanages Struggle to Reintegrate Children, Study Shows

The majority of institutional care centers and orphanages in Battambang province lack resources and policies needed in order to properly reintegrate children with their families or communities, according to a forthcoming report by Duke University researchers.

In 2012, a study by Unicef and the Ministry of Social Affairs found that only 23 percent of children who lived in residential care institutions, which are often misleadingly called orphanages, were actually orphans. The government has since said that reintegrating non-orphans into their families, or at least communities, is a priority.

Counting Calories

On any given day of the week, Mong Pheara eats rice. Rice porridge and small dried fish are her only other staple foods. Occasionally, she manages to eat a mango or a papaya. The same is true of Ms. Pheara’s entire household, which includes 10 members of her nuclear and extended family.

In three months, when Ms. Pheara gives birth to her second child, the number of people living in her house, sharing a latrine and a bar of soap, will reach 11.

Because of the lack of sufficient living space, durable housing, access to water and sanitation, and security of land tenure that would prevent forced evictions, their settlement in Russei Keo district’s Kilometr 6 commune falls into the classification of urban poor.

Suspects in Killing of Alleged Sorcerer Still at Large

Police in Takeo province’s Bati district on Wednesday said that they were still looking for 11 men identified as the main suspects in the killing of 36-year-old Pov Sovann, who was beaten and stoned to death on Sunday by about 600 people who accused him of sorcery.

“The 11 suspects, whom we identified, ran away on Sunday night, at around 8 p.m., after killing the victim,” district penal police chief Khut Lo said Wednesday, adding that they would be charged with premeditated murder.

Nine Migrant Workers Die On Way Home

Nine Cambodian workers returning home from Thailand died Friday in a car crash, the first major traffic disaster in the lead up to Khmer New Year.

“Nine Cambodians died in a car crash in Thailand,” said Chhoem Limhong, police chief of Battambang province’s Kamrieng district, on the Thai border. “They were on their way home for Khmer New Year.”

Opposition Says CNRP Not Racist, ‘Yuon’ Not Derogatory

The opposition CNRP released a statement Friday asserting that there is no anti-Vietnamese sentiment in the party, that the word yuon is not derogatory and that such allegations are generally spread by foreigners manipulated by the ruling CPP.

In last year’s election, some ethnic Vietnamese were prevented from voting. During the campaign, CNRP supporters frequently told CPP supporters that they had Khmer bodies, but “yuon” heads.

Acid Attack Survivor Once Again Seeking Fresh Start

Som Bunnarith is looking for a job. He has two university degrees, one in marketing, another in English. He speaks Thai. He is eloquent and hard working. He is also blind and disfigured, the result of an acid attack nine years ago.

On bad days, he has doubts that he will find a job. On good days, he is confident that his four years of experience as a peer counselor for the Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity (CASC) makes him a good candidate to take up a counseling job at a different NGO. 

Gov’t Denies Selling Ship Registry

A government spokesman on Friday threatened legal action over a Cambodia Daily report written in November that told how the rights to register foreign ships under the Cambodian flag were sold to a South Korean company.

A story by Radio Free Asia in which a reporter said that Prime Minister Hun Sen “confessed” that the divide between the rich and the poor could not be reduced, was also reprimanded. 

Demining Divers Receive New Equipment

KOMPONG CHHNANG DISTRICT, Kompong Chhnang province – Nine Cambodian divers are in the final phase of training, preparing to dive  in pitch-black water to recover ordnance buried in river mud for as long as half a century.

On Thursday, Cambodia’s first unit of demining divers received their own headquarters, stocked with $120,000 worth of underwater demining equipment donated by the U.S. government. From this building, painted bright blue, the divers are to start searching the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers for explosives that were sunk decades ago, when the Vietnam War spilled over into Cambodia. 

Official Says Cambodia Not Ready for Asean Free Trade

Cambodia is not prepared to join Asean’s single regional market and production base next year, a Labor Ministry official said Friday.

Next year, the 10 nations of Asean are to create the Asean Economic Community (AEC). Within this community, labor is to flow freely and import taxes are to drop to zero. Cambodia will likely become one of the members that will benefit the least, said participants of a regional forum, “Labor rights and preparation of 2015 ASEAN Community.”

New Mutation in Bird Flu Virus in Cambodia

Last year’s jump in avian influenza cases among Cambodians could be due to a mutation of the virus in Cambodia and southern Vietnam, experts said Tuesday at a meeting in Phnom Penh. They said it would be the first mutation here of the virus since it was first detected in the region a decade ago.

The new virus apparently mutated from two existing viruses. It was discovered around the time Cambodia reported its first human infections of 2013. Since January 2013, 35 Cambodians are known to have contracted the virus, a number that exceeded reports of any other country worldwide for that period.

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