The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Show up to work” plus 9 more

Each day the CNRP doesn't show up to work, the further the CPP inches forward with its own political agenda.

Captains, coaches and representatives of each of the 16 teams heading into the nine-day final phase of the 2013 Leo Cup of Volleyball to be held at Beeline Arena from Friday attended a press conference with tournament organisers at NagaWorld yesterday.

The six top teams from last year's event – Ministry of Interior Club, Bodyguard Headquarters Club, 3rd Intervention Division Club, Kampong Cham Club A team, Battambang Police Station Club and Sihanoukville Navy Sea Dragon Club – were automatically entered into the finals, and will be joined by provincial qualifiers: Veal Sbov commune's Cambodian Youth Federation Club of Kandal and Prey Veng's Cambodian Youth Federation Club from the Phnom Penh centre preliminaries; 31st Brigade Club and Kampong Cham Club B team from the Kampong Cham centre; Cambodian Youth Federation club and Red Lion Club from Battambang centre; 9th Intervention Brigade Club and Siem Reap's Directorate of Youth and Sport from Siem Reap centre; and Sihan-oukville Public Club and Takeo Club from Sihanoukville centre.

Two Buddhist monks were caught with drug paraphernalia and pornographic material yesterday in a raid on Sambour Meas Pagoda in Phnom Penh's Dangkor district.

The monks were defrocked following the raid, which saw police seize drug-taking paraphernalia and computers containing pornographic pictures and videos, police said.

The monks were identified as brothers Proeung Dona, 24, and Proeung Savoeun, 28. Two novice monks were also detained.

The brothers were given up by Chheang Vith, 33, who was arrested by police on Monday night allegedly on his way to deliver drugs to the pagoda. Thirteen small packets of methamphetamine were found on Vith, but no illegal substances were discovered by police in the raid.

However, Lieutenant Colonel Chim Sarann, chief of Dangkor District Police, accused the monks of involvement in the drug trade.

"They were drug users and also drug distributors in Phnom Penh," he said, adding that police had "spent many weeks investigating".

Brigadier General Pen Rath, deputy chief of Phnom Penh Municipal Police, slammed the monks for their behaviour.

"These two Buddhist monks were … people who would be obeyed by Buddhists in Cambodia, but they are drug users," he said, noting that the arrests would reflect poorly on other monks as well.

Officials at the National Committee for Disaster Management said yesterday that the death toll from lightning strikes had reached 100 people for the first nine months of 2013.

Keo Vy, chief of cabinet at the NCDM, said that in addition to the 100 people killed by lightning, 74 others were injured and 47 farm animals were killed.

The figures represent a very slight decrease in deaths over the same period last year, which saw 103 people killed. But there was an equally slight increase in injuries from last year, when only 71 people were hurt by lightning.

"The dangerousness of lightning seems to have decreased this month because the amount of rainfall is beginning to decrease," Vy said.

Lightning deaths in Cambodia have been a perennial problem over the years. Though the government insists it takes pains to educate people on storm safety, hundreds have died or been injured after being struck while working in the fields.

The number of fatalities from traffic accidents during the Pchum Ben festival season was slightly lower this year, though injuries increased, according to a report from the National Police.

Twenty-four people were killed and 169 injured between October 3 and 5. During the same period in 2012, 26 people were killed, while 139 were injured.

Him Yan, director at the Department of Public Order at the National Police, said many injuries were mild.

"In some cases only slight injuries were sustained, and in other cases, the cars slid on the road, causing minor injuries," he said.

Among the victims were nine pedestrians and 75 people riding motorbikes without helmets, he added.

Twenty-three cases involved speeding drivers, and 14 involved drunken drivers.

Most accidents occurred in Kampong Cham, Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Speu, Kampot, Kandal and Takeo provinces.

Cambodia's rice exports roughly doubled in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2012, according to government data released yesterday. But the figures aren't big enough to meet official goals for 2013.

The numbers show that exports of fragrant rice and ordinary white rice each accounted for about half of the 266,123 tonnes that shipped out from January through September.

The figures are set to fall short of the Cambodian government's planned 500,000 tonnes in 2013, a goal which in turn represents half of the one million tonnes per year that officials hope to export by 2015.

"Our production is getting better, and our rice is more recognised at the market," said Kim Savuth, president of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Exporters and head of the company Khmer Food. "I predict that export quantity will reach 350,000 tonnes by the end of this year."

With 39,568 tonnes of exports, Amru Rice Cambodia was the leading company during the period, followed by Khmer Food and Golden Rice Cambodia, with 35,519 and 23,945 tonnes, respectively.

Poland received 43,375 tonnes, making the Eastern European nation the largest importer of Cambodian rice. France brought in the second-biggest share, followed by trading partners Malaysia, Thailand and the Netherlands.

Van David Vichet, deputy secretary general of the Alliance of Rice Producers and Exporters of Cambodia (ARPEC), said the 500,000-tonne target might be out of reach with so little time left in the year. He explained that, on average, Cambodia exports 30,000 tonnes per month. With only three months left of 2013, the numbers aren't adding up to 500,000.

"We can reach about 360,000 tonnes, or in the best case we can export 400,000 tonnes by the end of this year," he said.

In a city as dynamic as Phnom Penh, it is difficult to map the continuous change. To keep up with the fast pace, 10 residents have teamed together to create Phnom Penh's first crowdsourced mapping project.

The project, whose campaigns have already included mapping areas prone to flooding and the city's innumerable potholes, had its formal launch at Meta House last night.

The people behind Urban Voice, whose website uses online mapping software that can be updated by anyone, intended to create a forum for residents to share information that can be used to facilitate the city's development.

"One day you'd see a building somewhere, and then the next day it would be gone," said Nora Lindstrom, the project coordinator who founded Urban Voice with two others in February 2012.

"Who knows exactly what's happening? There seemed to be no place to go where you could find out."

All sorts of facets of urban life are mapped on Urban Voice's website, ranging from road quality to areas prone to political demonstrations. More permanent features, such as schools and heritage sites, are also documented.

Its most consequential mapping campaign to date was Save the Internet Cafés, which was launched last year in response to a Ministry of Post and Telecommunications order to close all internet cafés within 500 metres of schools. The campaign had participants map the city's internet cafés in relation to schools to determine the effects that the order would have if enforced. It soon became apparent that almost all the city's internet cafés were within the prohibited radii.

Although Lindstrom refused to accept full credit for the order's ultimate death, she said that it was telling that the Telecommunications Ministry publicly denied that the government would shut down internet cafés, citing their usefulness to the economy, weeks after the campaign's launch.

"The map we made, which was very graphic, showed very clearly that all the internet cafés were inside a 500-metre radius of a school."

The website's mapping software is provided by Ushahidi, a Nairobi-based company that was first started in 2008 to map Kenya's 2007-2008 election violence. It has since been used to map flooding in Pakistan and bombings in Libya. It also drew inspiration from a similar US-based urban mapping website called SeeClickFix, which allows users to report urban issues directly to city governments.

It is not just maps, however, that Urban Voice hopes to produce, Lindstrom, who added that Urban Voice aims to be a multimedia project, said.

"It started off as a map, but we want to widen our focus because we have realised that [online] maps are not necessarily accessible to everyone," Lindstrom said.

To expand the project's output to other mediums, Urban Voice contributor Phom Ravy directed a short film that made its premiere at the launch last night. The film, titled The City Speaks, explores the perspectives of ordinary Phnom Penh citizens.

"The video is talking about youths in the city, what they like, what they don't like – what they want to improve, and what they want to see Phnom Penh look like in the future," Ravy said.

Next, Urban Voice intends to form a task force to clean the city's streets.

Eventually, Lindstrom hopes that Urban Voice reports will go directly to city authorities to allow them to take action on pressing city issues.

The staff members hope that interest will spread to other urban centres, and even beyond Cambodia's borders.

"Half of the world's population lives in cities," Lindstrom said. "That's really why urban voices exists – because we really need to focus more on cities and how they are developing."

Urban Voice's Meta House exhibition, which features samples of its work and a map that allows visitors to pin their own homes' location to be uploaded onto the site, runs for two weeks.

Cambodia's youngest Davis Cupper Long Samneang blanked out local player Berta Farras 6-0, 6-0 yesterday in the opening round of the Jakarta International Junior Tennis Championships being played at the Indonesian capital's Kemayoran Tennis Stadium.

The 16-year-old right hander, who was part of Cambodia's successful Mission to Doha in 2012, was confined to his hotel room in Dubai last month after being diagnosed with chicken pox and could play no part in the Kingdom's Asia Oceania Group III campaign.

Having recovered well enough, Long Samneang is now in Indonesia for two ITF Grade Four Junior events in quest for his first world junior ranking point.

As a direct entry into the main draw of 64, Long Samneang found the going against Farras to his liking and at no stage was he seriously tested.

But a far bigger challenge awaits him in today's second round, where a victory against an opponent not yet identified would get him into the world ranking list for the first time in his career.

"It is a big step forward for him and if he gets a world junior ranking it will be much needed boost for our junior tennis initiative," Tennis Federation of Cambodia Secretary General Tep Rithivit told the Post.

The newly appointed TFC's head of Junior Development, Phalkun Mam, who played a key role in Cambodia retaining the Group III status in Dubai last month, is accompanying Long Samneang on this trip.

Surely a gameweek where more than half of the fixtures feature at least three goals would yield some impressive Cellcard Fantasy League totals for managers. Think again.

Gameweek 7 produced the lowest set of scores in the campaign so far, and a cursory peek at the Dream Team shows why, with virtually no big names making the elite 11.

Top pick was West Ham's New Zealander defender Winston Reid, whose goal and clean sheet garnered 15 points, all for the bargain price of just £5 million.

Manchester United's young Belgian protégé Adnan Januzaj banged in a match-winning brace past Sunderland to earn 14 points, while Newcastle's summer striker signing Loic Remy also did the double over Cardiff for 13 points.

The gameweek saw an old timer rise from the ashes of lowly 255th place to claim the Cellcard goodies of a $20 phone voucher and T-shirt. Lazrus Simons with his humourously named Norfolk Enchance amassed 70 points, largely attributed to having the season's stand out individual so far, Daniel Sturridge of Liverpool, as captain for 18 points.

Southampton keeper Artur Boruc for 10 points was Simons' only selection that starred in the Dream team.

Over in the affiliated Face-book competition run by Cellcard, the question of who will score first and how in the match between Manchester City and Everton was correctly answered by 10 participants as Romelu Lukaku with a kick. Chanrith So was the lucky winner drawn to collect the $10 phone voucher prize.

The league heads into another fortnight hiatus to accommodate 2014 World Cup qualifiers across the globe.

Boeung Ket Rubber Field have announced the signing of top-rated striker Khoun Laboravy from Metfone C-League champions Svay Rieng FC.

The Kampong Cham native, who scored the decisive goal in July's Super 4 play-off final against his new club to deny them a second successive league title, said in an interview posted on the club's official website (www.beoungketfc.com) on Saturday:

"I'm very happy with my transfer . . . It's a great club to play for, and I just want to keep playing football. [I'm] ready to die for my homeland club." The 25-year-old national team star has scorched the domestic scene, claiming Golden Boot awards as top scorer in the 2011 and 2012 Hun Sen Cup competitions as well as in the most recent MCL campaign.

According to club officials, his undisclosed transfer fee has set a new Cambodian record. Laboravy is set to link up with former team-mate Chan Vathanaka. "I think we can form a good partnership like Messi and Neymar," added Laboravy.

"I hope my 'little brother' [Vathanaka] can deliver good crosses for me to score like he used to when we played together at Svay Rieng FC."