Chhay is not happy with Huy
Boys Band
Australian guy tried to eat Cambodian dry beef
SE Asain food
Everyone smiles
Can't stand straightly
One girl wanna fly
Monday, May 11, 2009
Party in Dormitory-May 2009
Chhay is not happy with Huy
Boys Band
Australian guy tried to eat Cambodian dry beef
SE Asain food
Everyone smiles
Can't stand straightly
One girl wanna fly
Britain garment manufacturer moves operations to Cambodia
Britain garment manufacturer moves operations to Cambodia
Source: Xinhua
PHNOM PENH, May 11, 2009
A major garment manufacturer will move its product development center from the United Kingdom to Cambodia, a sign, according to some experts, that despite the effects of the economic crisis, the Cambodian garment sector continues to remain internationally competitive, local media reported on Monday. Britain company New Island Clothing is setting up "a high level standards product development center," making the company one of the first to conduct the whole garment-production process -- from development to the placement of orders -- in Cambodia, New Island General Manager Kevin Plenty was quoted by the Cambodia Daily as saying. The company, which has been in Cambodia for nine years and produces up to 75,000 men's shirts per week, had decided to set up the center here because it makes "the whole production process quicker for our customers," as the majority of materials come from the ASEAN region, said Plenty.
Kaing Monika, external affairs manager of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) said New Island's strategy showed the factory's "long-term vision and commitment in Cambodia," adding that most Cambodian factories only do "cut, make and trim" -- a production formula in which raw materials and designs are supplied and factories only really stitch the clothes together.
Tuomo Poutiainen, chief technical adviser for the International Labor Organization's garment sector program Better Factories Cambodia, said New Island's decision was "very positive for industry" and showed there was "enough confidence in the Cambodian garment sector to invest even in bad times."
Hundreds of factories have constituted the backbone of the garment sector of Cambodia, which used to generate above 70 percent of its total annual export volumes.
However, due to the global financial crisis and rising labor disputes, at least 60 garment factories have been closed and more than 50,000 garment workers lost their jobs since late 2008 and the sector's export volumes have also seen an obvious slide in the first quarter of this year.
But Plenty said he believed that the industry will see an economic turnaround within six months, and that he is not the only one within the garment industry to feel that way.
What lies beneath
What lies beneath
Since 1992, almost 1 million mines have been cleared from about 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of land in Cambodia like this site in Battambang province. (Nicolas Axelrod/GlobalPost)Due to its troubled past, Cambodia is a leading exporter of demining expertise.
May 8, 2009
By Claire Duffet - Special to GlobalPost
PHNOM PENH — Nuon Sao has laid 11,000 mines across Cambodia.
The 44-year-old, who now works for a non-profit radio station in Phnom Penh, fought for 13 years with the now-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) during the civil war that followed the fall of the communist Khmer Rouge in 1979.
But when the United Nations took control of Cambodia in 1992 to enforce a shaky peace accord, Nuon Sao defected to its demining unit and began unstitching what he had made. Thousands of other soldiers eventually joined him.
Today, this same ragtag group of militiamen still removes most of the explosives throughout the country. Since 1992, almost 1 million mines have been cleared from about 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of land. Three non-governmental organizations and Cambodia’s military divide up the work, which is administered by an oversight group funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). They estimate that less than 700 square kilometers of mined land remains in Cambodia.
Despite the makeshift start, the U.N. is impressed with the pace of Cambodian demining. In an April speech on the achievement of Cambodia’s U.N. Millennium Development Goals, Cambodia is “now regarded as a world leader in demining," said Douglas Broderick, the country's U.N. resident coordinator.
“Over the past decade, Cambodia has made a remarkable transition from infamously being one of the most mine-affected countries in the world to becoming one of the most innovative countries in addressing the problem,” UNDP Cambodia mine action project manager Melissa Sabatier told GlobalPost.
This unique expertise is now being exported overseas.
In 2007, Prime Minister Hun Sen allowed the U.N. to send 135 Cambodian troops to clear mines in southern Sudan. For three years, Cambodia has maintained troops there on a rotating schedule, with another company set to deploy in June. Of five participating countries, Cambodia has cleared the most mines — more than 2,000 — and is highest rated by the U.N. in terms of both productivity and safety, said Ker Savoeun, director of the military’s peacekeeping division and a former CPP fighter.
In January, the military trained another 400 troops for emergency peacekeeping and demining missions. With 45 days notice, the U.N. can send them anywhere in the world. Sometime this year, the U.N. will also send 20-soldier platoons to both Chad and the Central African Republic to provide airport security. These missions boost Cambodia’s reputation and soldiers’ wallets. While the average troop earns less than $400 annually, the U.N. pays its peacekeepers and deminers $1,000 per month.
Demining expertise proved even more lucrative for Srey Sangha, a former KPNLF member and the chief surveyor for Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), the largest clearance NGO in Cambodia. In May 2007, a Swedish electricity company hired him to identify mined areas in southern Angola where it planned to build a power line. While he earns $800 per month as a department head at CMAC, he was paid $32,000 for four months’ work in Angola.
Along with Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia are considered the most heavily mined countries in the world. But the demining that Srey Sangha says he encountered in Angola was amateur compared to the work in his home country. Not only did Angola lack modern equipment, the maps he was given hadn’t been updated since 1880.
In CMAC’s clearance fields in Cambodia’s northwest, workers use a mixture of long-tested and high-tech methods. Up to 90 percent of demining is still carried out by individuals equipped with handheld metal detectors and prods, said Pring Panharith, the director of the organization’s Battambang unit and a former Khmer Rouge member. Pairs work in meter-wide rows divided by red yarn. They scan the land and if it’s clear, they unravel the spools 8 centimeters and scan again. If they find a mine, they either diffuse it or blow it up. This process is slow and tedious, but cheap.
In 2000, CMAC began using dogs to speed up its work. It now has the second-largest canine demining program in the world, after Bosnia, with 56 animals sniffing for TNT remnants, Pring Panharith said. For forested terrain and areas with an abundance of anti-tank mines, CMAC uses enormous, Japanese-made machines that dwarf most heavy construction equipment. The swing-type deminer, made by Hitachi, was created and tested in Cambodia.
CMAC is also training its staff to use the Handheld Standoff Mine Detection System, a state-of-the-art device that identifies whether or not a piece of metal under the ground is hollow. Deminers find millions of metal scraps that they must treat as potential explosives. Identifying the harmless fragments will speed up the clearance process immeasurably, said Heng Ratana, the CMAC director-general.
Despite advances, land mines remain a deadly problem in Cambodia. Though the number of mine-related injuries and deaths dropped from 858 in 2000 to 266 in 2008, the latter figure is still unacceptable, Heng Ratana said. The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention requires Cambodia to eradicate land mines completely by Dec. 31. Within the next few weeks, the government will request to extend the deadline to 2020.
Though a mine-free Cambodia remains distant, individual success stories are more common than ever.
Near a minefield outside Battambang where dogs named Happy and Peanut sniffed for bombs recently, Cheng Pek, 56, sat with his wife outside their bamboo hut feeding chickens. They returned from the Thai border in 1993 when the government offered refugees free plots of mine-filled land. Living in fear, they subsisted on vegetables grown on a half-hectare plot. CMAC cleared their land late last year, uncovering a 5-square-meter stockpile of explosives. This season, the couple will grow corn, mango, tapioca, and coconut across 3 hectares.
“If this land was not cleared by CMAC, we could not grow anything,” Cheng Pek said. “The mines would still be here in a thousand years.”
May 8, 2009
By Claire Duffet - Special to GlobalPost
PHNOM PENH — Nuon Sao has laid 11,000 mines across Cambodia.
The 44-year-old, who now works for a non-profit radio station in Phnom Penh, fought for 13 years with the now-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) during the civil war that followed the fall of the communist Khmer Rouge in 1979.
But when the United Nations took control of Cambodia in 1992 to enforce a shaky peace accord, Nuon Sao defected to its demining unit and began unstitching what he had made. Thousands of other soldiers eventually joined him.
Today, this same ragtag group of militiamen still removes most of the explosives throughout the country. Since 1992, almost 1 million mines have been cleared from about 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of land. Three non-governmental organizations and Cambodia’s military divide up the work, which is administered by an oversight group funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). They estimate that less than 700 square kilometers of mined land remains in Cambodia.
Despite the makeshift start, the U.N. is impressed with the pace of Cambodian demining. In an April speech on the achievement of Cambodia’s U.N. Millennium Development Goals, Cambodia is “now regarded as a world leader in demining," said Douglas Broderick, the country's U.N. resident coordinator.
“Over the past decade, Cambodia has made a remarkable transition from infamously being one of the most mine-affected countries in the world to becoming one of the most innovative countries in addressing the problem,” UNDP Cambodia mine action project manager Melissa Sabatier told GlobalPost.
This unique expertise is now being exported overseas.
In 2007, Prime Minister Hun Sen allowed the U.N. to send 135 Cambodian troops to clear mines in southern Sudan. For three years, Cambodia has maintained troops there on a rotating schedule, with another company set to deploy in June. Of five participating countries, Cambodia has cleared the most mines — more than 2,000 — and is highest rated by the U.N. in terms of both productivity and safety, said Ker Savoeun, director of the military’s peacekeeping division and a former CPP fighter.
In January, the military trained another 400 troops for emergency peacekeeping and demining missions. With 45 days notice, the U.N. can send them anywhere in the world. Sometime this year, the U.N. will also send 20-soldier platoons to both Chad and the Central African Republic to provide airport security. These missions boost Cambodia’s reputation and soldiers’ wallets. While the average troop earns less than $400 annually, the U.N. pays its peacekeepers and deminers $1,000 per month.
Demining expertise proved even more lucrative for Srey Sangha, a former KPNLF member and the chief surveyor for Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), the largest clearance NGO in Cambodia. In May 2007, a Swedish electricity company hired him to identify mined areas in southern Angola where it planned to build a power line. While he earns $800 per month as a department head at CMAC, he was paid $32,000 for four months’ work in Angola.
Along with Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia are considered the most heavily mined countries in the world. But the demining that Srey Sangha says he encountered in Angola was amateur compared to the work in his home country. Not only did Angola lack modern equipment, the maps he was given hadn’t been updated since 1880.
In CMAC’s clearance fields in Cambodia’s northwest, workers use a mixture of long-tested and high-tech methods. Up to 90 percent of demining is still carried out by individuals equipped with handheld metal detectors and prods, said Pring Panharith, the director of the organization’s Battambang unit and a former Khmer Rouge member. Pairs work in meter-wide rows divided by red yarn. They scan the land and if it’s clear, they unravel the spools 8 centimeters and scan again. If they find a mine, they either diffuse it or blow it up. This process is slow and tedious, but cheap.
In 2000, CMAC began using dogs to speed up its work. It now has the second-largest canine demining program in the world, after Bosnia, with 56 animals sniffing for TNT remnants, Pring Panharith said. For forested terrain and areas with an abundance of anti-tank mines, CMAC uses enormous, Japanese-made machines that dwarf most heavy construction equipment. The swing-type deminer, made by Hitachi, was created and tested in Cambodia.
CMAC is also training its staff to use the Handheld Standoff Mine Detection System, a state-of-the-art device that identifies whether or not a piece of metal under the ground is hollow. Deminers find millions of metal scraps that they must treat as potential explosives. Identifying the harmless fragments will speed up the clearance process immeasurably, said Heng Ratana, the CMAC director-general.
Despite advances, land mines remain a deadly problem in Cambodia. Though the number of mine-related injuries and deaths dropped from 858 in 2000 to 266 in 2008, the latter figure is still unacceptable, Heng Ratana said. The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention requires Cambodia to eradicate land mines completely by Dec. 31. Within the next few weeks, the government will request to extend the deadline to 2020.
Though a mine-free Cambodia remains distant, individual success stories are more common than ever.
Near a minefield outside Battambang where dogs named Happy and Peanut sniffed for bombs recently, Cheng Pek, 56, sat with his wife outside their bamboo hut feeding chickens. They returned from the Thai border in 1993 when the government offered refugees free plots of mine-filled land. Living in fear, they subsisted on vegetables grown on a half-hectare plot. CMAC cleared their land late last year, uncovering a 5-square-meter stockpile of explosives. This season, the couple will grow corn, mango, tapioca, and coconut across 3 hectares.
“If this land was not cleared by CMAC, we could not grow anything,” Cheng Pek said. “The mines would still be here in a thousand years.”
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