The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Charges for three after heroin bust” plus 9 more

Three foreign nationals accused of trying to smuggle heroin from Cambodia to Australia were charged yesterday with drug trafficking at Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

Twenty-four-year-old Nigerian Precious Chineme Nwoko, 19-year-old French national Charlene Savarino and 41-year-old Australian Yoshe Ann Paylor were charged with drug possession, transportation and trafficking.

"They were charged … under Article 40 of Cambodia's Anti-Drug Law. They will now continue further questioning by the investigative judge," said a senior anti-terrorism police official who asked not to be named.

The two women were arrested at Phnom Penh International Airport and the man was found at a rental house in Chamkarmon district on September 18.

"They were arrested while they were preparing to bring two kilograms of heroin to Australia," the official said. Police are still seeking to arrest a fourth accomplice. Ly Sophanna, vice prosecutor of Phnom Penh Municipal Court, could not be reached.

Playing at a fast tempo that Extra Joss Warriors found too hot to handle, Alaxan FR Patriots romped home to another big victory 92-58 at the Beeline Arena on Saturday to keep their unbeaten record intact in the Cambodian Basketball League sponsored by the Western Union and Coca-Cola.

But for a brief rally in the second quarter through Ley Denetrosa, the Warriors were wobbling around unable to contain Aimar Sabayo and Dexter Arcenas, who kept firing from all sides.

The Warriors were not too far back at half time with just six points to make up but the Patriots blazed away in the second half, landing in the bargain a 35-point fourth quarter blow for a resounding win.

Sabayo posted 29 points to take top honours for the Patriots while Denetrosa's 23 points stood out for the Warriors.

"I am happy with the win. We are on top and everyone wants to beat us. Its a challenge for the other teams. This is putting some extra pressure on us," Patriots manager Chris Borja told the Post after the game.

In a low scoring affair, IRB The Lord, who are second in the ranking behind the Patriots, managed to stave off CCPL Heat 37-32 despite leading by 15 points at half time.

In fact, the Heat drew a complete blank in the first quarter and a collective lack of self belief was glaringly evident, allowing The Lord the luxury of a healthy lead.

Sloppy defending in the second session by The Lord, however, opened up an avenue for Panha Sovann to stage a recovery of sorts for the Heat, who got up to within two points of their rivals at the end of the third quarter.

The fourth quarter saw an unusually high number of turnovers and the Heat came worse off with Kim Ran missing a few vital standing shots under the rim.

Monh Ratana (nine points) and Hour Pich Bunchour (eight points) were the main scorers for The Lord and Panha Sovann matched that combined effort with 17 of his own.

The Dragons toyed with NSK Dream in their 77-28 drubbing. Despite missing two key players – Eric Laughlin, who left the country, and Matsuki Nishikawa, who was unavailable for this game – the Dragons had no problems packing speed and sharpness to their transitions.

Without point guard Ravuth Meas and Reazzy in their line- up, NSK were struggling to get going and by half time their cause was seemingly lost.

Stephen Billington (12) and Khan Karakhanov were grabbing every rebound in the paint and with Jay Boolkin (15) delivering one assist after another for Ben Laird (22) Leng Seng (17), the Dragons were on a roll.

"I was a bit concerned how we would play after Eric Laughlin left the team. But the boys reacted in the best ever manner," Dragons manager Michael Dibbern told the Post.

Cellcard Eagles edged out Post Buffaloes 50-43, keeping their play-off hopes alive following NSK Dream's loss earlier in the day. The tide turned the Eagles way in the second quarter, which they dominated 22-9. Geoff Harry came good for the Eagles with 23 points. Jay Roden was the Buffaloes mainstay with 21 points.

The Freemantle Dockers delighted the 43,249 sellout crowd at Perth's Patersons Stadium on Saturday night by producing some exquisite pressure football to shoot down the Sydney Swans in their AFL prelimary final.

The 14.15 (99) to 11.8 (74) win booked Freemantle's place in next Saturday's AFL grand final against Hawthorn, who recorded their first victory over Geelong Cats since 2008 with a thrilling 14.18 (102) to 15.7 (97) scoreline at the MCG on Friday.

Geelong's Travis Varcoe had a chance to tie the game with seconds on the clock, but his effort from 30 metres out narrowly missed.

A badminton event for veterans, organised by the Ministry of Interior Sport Club, wrapped up its two days of competition at the Department of Logistics yesterday with an awards ceremony presided over by the Ministry's general secretary Khem Jun.

Of the 20 clubs and associations that participated, only two – the Department of Logistics Club and MoI Sports Club – had members that laid claim to titles.

Canada-based Learning Jungle School, an early learning and child care provider, will enter the expanding Cambodian pre-school market, planning to start operations in January 2014.

Ly Virak, Learning Jungle School franchisee for Cambodia, said there is an increasing number of young Cambodian parents who understand the importance of having their child attend a top-notch pre-school, and are willing to pay for it.

"Learning Jungle School's presence in Cambodia will be a game changer," Virak said. "Cambodians can now truly enjoy international quality of pre-school education, all while staying in Cambodia."

Located in the Tuol Kork district of Phnom Penh, the two-storey building is under construction and nearly finished. The school fee is not confirmed, but Virak said the company will target wealthy Cambodians and foreigners with kids. Registration is in November.

Besides six locations in Canada, Learning Jungle School has also been operating in the Philippines since 2006.

With international companies springing up in Phnom Penh and a growing awareness for the importance of high-quality education among Cambodians, bringing international pre-schools to the city has potential, said Pech Polene, chairman and CEO of Phnom Penh private school Westline Education Group.

"Supply is still small now but the number of families who can afford standardised quality of education is on the rise," Polene said. "The industry is currently seeing healthy growth and healthy competition."

Solar-powered tuk-tuks could be rolling off the assembly lines in Phnom Penh as early as March next year, allowing local tuk-tuk drivers a cost-effective and greener alternative to using petrol, according to the company manufacturing the vehicle.

Star 8, the Australia-based alternative energy firm behind the "SolarTuk", is building a factory with a local partner in Dangkor district on the western outskirts of the city.

The firm's managing director Jacob Maimon expects to hire 200 to 300 local staff once production goes live.

Maimon said his version of Southeast Asia's ubiquitous motor-driven carriage will come in four different styles and cost between A$2,000 (US$1,880) and A$3,000.

Within the community of tuk-tuk drivers and transportation watchers, the impending arrival of the SolarTuk is generating mixed reactions.

Vorn Pao, president of the Independent Democracy of Informal Economy Association (IDIEA), a group that represents tuk-tuk drivers and other informal workers, said that for the SolarTuk to break into the market, it has to be strong enough to deal with the poor conditions of Cambodia's streets and sturdy enough to handle heavy loads.

"Compared to the price of a new item currently used, the new tuk-tuk is similar in price but could provide greater benefits," he said.

Poa estimates that there are about 8,000 tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh and some 5,000 in Siem Reap, two of Cambodia's biggest tourist destinations.

The SolarTuk has sparked interest among Phnom Penh's drivers who would normally pay close to $2,000 for a brand new petrol-powered motorbike and carriage. The SolarTuk combines the carriage and motorbike in one.

But they also had a wait-and-see attitude, a reluctance to sell off perfectly usable tuk-tuks for an untested product.

"When the first users show that it's successful, others may follow suit," said driver Chang Sophea, while sitting in his tuk-tuk yesterday waiting for passengers outside an apartment in Boeung Keng Kang 1 commune.

Driver Chan Sarom, parked near Brown Café on Street 51, estimates that about 20 per cent of his revenue is spent on fuel. He weighed the investment in the short term against savings over time.

"It is a high price for me, but I might be interested to pay that if it was useful for my business," he said.

With solar panels on top, each vehicle has two batteries: one to power the engine and the other for storage that can be utilised as an alternative energy source in households.

Interest in the design has "gone off the scale already", according to Star 8's Maimon, who says inquiries about the product are coming in from the domestic market, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and as far afield as Nigeria.

A weeks-long strike took a violent turn on Saturday evening as military police hired to guard a garment factory fired rounds inside the building and severely beat one man, union leaders said.

As some 2,000 workers were striking at SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) on Saturday afternoon – some blocking the road outside and others demonstrating inside the factory – guards inside fired their guns above the heads of workers and demonstrators, said Kong Athit, vice president of Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers' Democratic Union.

Then when Sun Seng, 50, tried to break up an argument between a striking worker and someone who returned to work, guards dragged him away and mercilessly beat him, Seng said in a video posted on the Cambodian Labour Confederation's website. Seng was taken to Calmette Hospital, where he remained yesterday evening, an SL worker representative said.

SL official Sao Chhin said workers caused all of the violence, and added that at least 10 current workers were injured.

A report on mass worker faintings in Cambodia's garment industry points to malnutrition and low wages as key driving factors behind the common phenomenon.

Shop 'til they drop, a study released last week by NGOs Community Legal Education Center and Labour Behind the Label, found that 33 per cent of 95 workers they sampled were malnourished by medical standards, and 25 per cent were dangerously emaciated.

"The [body mass index] data was really concerning," Joel Preston, a CLEC consultant who conducted BMI research for the study, said yesterday.

On average, garment workers consume 1,598 calories, the report says, but the minimum daily caloric intake for a person who works in an industrial setting and performs moderate to heavy physical work is 3,000 – the report says, citing standards laid out by the Indonesian government as their source.

Buying enough quality food for proper nutrition costs workers just over $75 per month, the report says, a prohibitively high price for those earning Cambodia's minimum monthly wage of $80 per month. Other factors contributing to garment workers fainting include overwork, poor ventilation and lack of access to water, the report says.

Incidents of hundreds of workers fainting on the job at once have long been endemic in Cambodia's garment industry, Kong Athit, vice president of Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers' Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), said. Although media outlets have reported on the subject more extensively in the past few years, Athit saw fainting as a widespread issue as early as the 1990s.

"This fainting existed in '97, '98," Athit said. "It's been continuing until now."

Athit, a former factory worker who personally dealt with faintings, said the blame for ongoing mass fainting lies largely with the Cambodian government's lack of political will to pressure factory owners and garment buyers – often international retail giants – to improve working conditions and salaries.

"I think brands and owners could do more," Athit said. "But we need a good government to tell the employer what they can and cannot do; to tell the brands what they can and cannot do."

In addition to a wage hike, the report urges factories to implement free on-site meal programs. It calls on brands who buy from these factories to immediately release public comments regarding worker malnutrition, and for the Cambodian government to support the development of meal provision as an industry norm.

But the report's correlation of malnutrition and wages left Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturer's Association in Cambodia (GMAC), incredulous about the study's conclusions.

"I think it's ridiculous to claim that workers don't have the financial ability to properly feed themselves," Loo said yesterday. "They can afford mobile phones, but they can't afford to eat properly? Something doesn't add up to me."

Despite the $80 minimum wage, Loo added, with overtime and bonuses, most workers earn about $150 per month, the amount the study cites as a living wage for a single person.

About 20 people grinned for the camera as they posed in front of a flagpole-like structure located just off a muddy dirt road in Kampong Chhnang province's Samaki Meanchey district on Thursday morning.

While a rather unimpressive visual, the agrometerological station is a first-of-its-kind device in Cambodia that provides data which could give small-time farmers in Kampong Chhnang a serious edge over Mother Nature.

After taking a look at the approximately $2,500 assemblage of sensors, thermometers and other tools, officials from the provincial Ministry of Water Management and Meteorology and others gathered inside the ministry's narrow building. They chattered and cocked their heads toward the PowerPoint presentation that the husband and wife team of Krisanadej and Mullica Jarounstvtasinee – both professors at Thailand's Walailak University – gave on how to collate data from the installation.

"If they have this kind of instrument, they can know . . . [if] the soil is wet [enough]," said Mullica, a professor of biology at the school's Center of Excellence for Ecoinformatics, an emerging area of study combining information and ecological science. Cambodian farmers often water twice a day whether necessary or not, she explained.

In addition to collecting data on soil moisture at different levels of the earth – sensors sit at 25cm, 50cm, 75cm and 1 metre below the surface – the agrometerological station compiles statistics including pressure, temperature and total rainfall, Krisanadej Jarounstvtasinee, a physics professor, said.

For decades, farmers and vineyard owners in the United States have used the same equipment manufactured by San Francisco-based Davis Instruments Corp to monitor their crops' health and determine how much they should water their soil, Krisanadej said. The technology first reached Southeast Asia less than 10 years ago in 2006, when private companies in Thailand began using it.

Since a scourge of floods submerged much of Thailand in December, Mullica said, the government has installed about 400 such stations across the country. Assembly takes just three days.

In Cambodia's case, local farmers will benefit from the information taken from the installation, said Nop Polin, an advocacy officer for climate change at DanChurchAid, a Danish Christian aid organisation.

"If it is successful, we will introduce it to the government," Polin said.

After seeing a similar program in the Philippines, Polin approached Walailak University and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, which funded the pilot program.

Thursday's training taught water management and meteorology officials how to extrapolate data from the station. Those officials will then translate data into terms that average farmers would understand, then hand the information to commune officials who can post the latest agricultural and weather information, Polin said.

The reports should add accuracy to farming tactics employed by locals, who typically only have one crop per year.

"It's an opportunity to link climate information into farming, Polin said. "We need to combine local knowledge with technology."

With climate change seemingly extending monsoon breaks during Cambodia's rainy season in the past decade, the station's up-to-the-hour outlook could give farmers, who use the calendar to indicate when to plant and harvest crops, a more accurate picture of changing atmospheric conditions, said Yat Sithoeurn, a farmer community facilitator at the Cambodian Center for Study of Development in Agriculture.

"Most people, they just don't understand climate change," said Sithoeurn, who will act as a go-betweens for farmers and government officials. "They just know about hot, or cold, or heavy rain or dry."

Several involved with the pilot program hope that success will lead to data-driven farming while widening the scale of climate change research in the region. But Thursday's training session stuck to more basic concepts, like which batteries to use on the station's console, and how to pull the data onto a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Raising his hand, one of the attendees asked Mullica what if a bird defecated on the ultraviolet and solar radiation sensors?

"Then you're very unlucky," she replied with a chuckle.

Pressure on King Norodom Sihamoni to delay today's planned opening of the National Assembly ratcheted up a few notches over the weekend as the Royal Palace received two rounds of petitions allegedly representing close to 500,000 citizens requesting more time for party negotiations.

The Cambodia National Rescue Party's 55 elected lawmakers have pledged to boycott today's ceremony, while the King has maintained he must open the assembly due to constitutional provisions.

Yesterday, about 300 people from 10 civil society groups gathered in front of police barricades at Sisowath Quay blocking the way to the Royal Palace.

Both police and the crowd remained calm, and representatives from four associations were eventually allowed past the barricades to hand over their petition to the King's representatives outside the palace.

"Our petition simply asks our King to delay the first meeting of the National Assembly because the two parties do not agree with each other yet," Vorn Pao, head of the Independent Democratic of Informal Economic Association (IDEA), said.

"[We ask the King] because [he] is the person who ensures peace in the country and the country is not yet at peace."

Other groups represented included the recently formed Independent Monk Network, the Cambodian Youth Network and the Cambodian Food and Service Workers' Federation.

The 10 groups presented the petition on behalf of more than 200,000 people, Pao said.

A group of opposition activists was also blocked by security forces while trying to deliver a different petition on Saturday.

According to CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann, more than 260,000 signatures were collected in 24 hours from around the country before being sent to Phnom Penh.

"Originally they did not want the petition to reach the King, but finally in the afternoon we could … because we spoke to the Royal Palace and delivered [many] boxes of signatures," he said, adding that the King had not yet replied to the petition.

Ho Dino, a palace official who received yesterday's petition, promised a reply but did not specify a date, Pao said.

Theng Savoeun, head of the Coalition of Cambodian Farmers Community, said his organisation was bringing 15 vans full of people to march on the palace yesterday when they were blocked by police on National Road 2 in Kandal.

"We just want to express our pain and ask the King not to [open the assembly] so we can stand up to demand democracy and freedom," he said.

Political analyst Lao Mong Hay said it was "possible but not probable" that the King would summon both leaders to meet with him this morning in response to public pressure.

"He should say: 'Both of you, come, I need your advice.'"