The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Soften our stance” plus 9 more

We can soften our stance; we don't need to stick to $160.

Former basketball star Dennis Rodman may have been in the eye of a birthday bash storm in North Korea but Cambodia, meanwhile, in a much quieter sense is seeking Pyongyang's help in training its wrestlers.

The Cambodian Wrestling Federation is requesting from its North Korean counterpart two young wrestlers-cum-coaches as replacement for 65-year-old Pak Su-nam, who left the Kingdom for good yesterday morning after a lengthy stint as the national team's head coach.

"I am extremely sad that Pak Su-nam has left us. He had done so much for our wrestlers," said National Olympic Committee of Cambodia Secretary General Vath Chamroeun, who trained under the veteran coach back in North Korea for two years before representing Cambodia at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

As Pak took a morning flight back to his country of origin, he made it plain that he was leaving with a leaden heart and that he had relished every moment of his time in the Kingdom. "I wish the Cambodian wrestlers well and I am extremely proud of what I saw in Myanmar. Those four gold medals in the SEA Games are the most fabulous parting gift I could have got. The future is really bright for Cambodian wrestling," said Pak, whose tenure over two terms added up to a little over 10 years.

Advancing age had forced him to coach away from the mat, but what the wrestling federation is now looking for are young coaches who can also double up as wrestlers so that the local trainees get a better grasp of grappling techniques.

New strategy
The CWF will soon cast its net wide around the world to trawl wrestlers with Cambodian roots. "This is our new strategy. There are so many talented Cambodian wrestlers overseas. In fact, I had met quite a lot of them in my competitive days in the United States.

"So we will start looking for these talents in Canada and the United States and possibly widen the search to other countries," Vath Chamreoun told the Post in an exclusive chat yesterday.

"Our second goal is to bolster women's wrestling where our medal prospects are really good," he added.

Myanmar gold medalist Chov Sotheara has called it a day on her competitive career, with the Federation now roping her in as a coach.

Kazarian coming
Armenian legend Stephan Kazarian, whose courtship with Cambodian wrestling dates back to the 60s, will be in Phnom Penh to conduct a short course for coaches and wrestlers during the last week of this month.

But of greater significance will be the feedback he is likely to give the NOCC on its proposed bid for staging the 2015 World Beach Wrestling Championship.

Kazarian had gone on an inspection trip to Sihanoukville during his last visit months ago to study the feasibility of holding these annual championships on one of the many beaches that the port city has to offer. Cambodia is yet to submit an official bid and complete the required documentation.

The NOCC is also keen on discussing with Kazarian the issue of obtaining more Olympic standard mats. At present there are just two of these mats available for training but Kazarian during his previous visit had made it abundantly clear that the Kingdom needed many more.

The CWF is counting on Kazarian's help to secure these mats from either Iran, Russia or Turkey, who are the dominant players in their manufacture.

Nanjing Games
Cambodia will send at least three wrestlers to Thailand for the qualifying rounds of the Youth Olympic Games to be held some time in May, ahead of the second edition in Nanjing, China, in August.

ONE Fighting Championship, Asia's largest mixed martial arts organisation, has signed seven top prospects to a growing stable of world class athletes.

Russian featherweight champion Marat Gafurov, Saipan heavyweight champion Kelvin Fitial, Australian champion Rob Lisita and his compatriot and BRACE featherweight champion Martin Nguyen have all signed with ONE FC following successful stints with their regional promotions.

They are joined by top free agents Kultar Gill, a Canadian-Indian kickboxer, and Shooto flyweight veteran Kentoro Watanabe of Japan.

Tem Moeun was re-elected yesterday as president of the Cambodian Amateur Boxing Federation during their fifth mandate elections held at the Institute of Physical Education inside the National Sports Complex.

The incumbent secured his second four-year stint in charge of the governing body after collecting all 23 of the votes.

Other CABF positions confirmed yesterday include Va Sin Phearom and Chhung Yoa Yen as vice presidents, Mil Kado as general secretary, Peng Som Ang as financial department chief and executive committee members Nin Phearom, Kim Lavy, Chan Suth, Reach Sophorn, Meas Sokry, Tes So and Chung Sokvandy.

The Japanese embassy is reporting a $280 million drop in Japanese investment last year, but officials were quick to say that the numbers don't necessarily reflect slumping investor confidence in Cambodia.

Japanese investment in the Kingdom reached about $47.5 million in 2013, compared to $328 million in 2012, according to Takayoshi Kuromiya, counselor at the embassy of Japan in Phnom Penh.

Kuromiya said yesterday that the drop was natural after the "exceptionally large" investment amount seen in 2012, which included Phnom Penh's soon-to-be-completed Aeon Mall on Sothearos Boulevard. Due to open in June, Aeon is valued at $205 million.

Last year, major investments by Japanese companies came in the form of factories that produce eye drops, watch parts and garments, he added.

He said that Cambodia's competitive labour costs had helped to maintain Japanese interests, while labour in "traditional investment destinations" such as China and Thailand had rapidly increased.

But garment sector wage disputes had companies concerned, and future investment levels were uncertain.

"In light of the current situation, we cannot precisely foresee the future trend of Japanese investment in Cambodia as private companies' investment decisions depend on various factors, including some unpredictable ones," he said.

While Japanese funds have fallen, Cambodia's prime minister announced a 250 per cent increase in Vietnamese investment during an official visit by his Vietnamese counterpart on Monday. At a conference held at the Peace Palace, Prime Minister Hun Sen presented figures showing that Vietnamese investment had reached $302 million in 2013. The increase promises to leave Japan even further down the list of Cambodia's top investors.

Statistics presented by the Council for Development of Cambodia during a December 2 and 3 seminar with Japanese investors showed that between 1994 and October this year, Cambodia approved Japanese foreign investments of $593 million. Nearly half of that came in 2012 alone.

That figure, however, placed Japan in 11th position on the list of Cambodia's top foreign spenders, behind South Korea, the European Union, the United States, Vietnam and Thailand. China led the way with more than $9.5 billion invested in Cambodia between 1994 and October 2013.

Aeon Mall, which is still being built over 68,000 square metres next to the Sofitel, is attracting additional Japanese money, according to the mall's managing director, Makoto Yajima.

On track for its opening, the mall will house about 190 brands, including Nojima, a Japanese home appliances store, and Thai-owned cinema operator Major Cineplex. It also boasts a 10-lane bowling alley.
"We aim to attract 10 million visitors in the first year," Yajima said.

More than 1,000 workers at the Manhattan (Cambodia) Co Ltd garment factory in Kampong Cham province are striking in the wake of factory management's reaction to their last strike action.

Employees walked off the job nearly two weeks ago, after the suspension of seven Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions (CATU) representatives who allegedly led workers to participate in a previous nationwide garment strike.

"Some workers who joined the mass demonstration … returned to work," said Kim Oun, one of the suspended employees. "But most of the workers refused, because their seven union representatives were suspended from work and sued in court."

Workers are demanding the factory drop court complaints filed against four of the reps, and not punish returning employees, Oun said.

An unnamed provincial Labour Department official said the department would meet with the union to find a solution today.

An Indonesian national was sentenced yesterday by Siem Reap Provincial Court to 30 years in prison and fined 40 million riel (about $5,000) for smuggling 2.5 kilograms of cocaine from Indonesia to Cambodia last year, a court official said.

Deputy prosecutor Srea Ratanak said 27-year-old Ita Amparawati was found guilty on charges of keeping, transporting and trafficking drugs.

Major Oum Sa Ath, chief of the Siem Reap Provincial Anti-Drug Police, said Amparawati had travelled from Indonesia to Siem Reap last July. She was arrested after customs police found three large packages of cocaine hidden in her luggage.

Neither Amparawati nor her defence lawyer could be reached for comment yesterday.

Large quantities of drugs – particularly cocaine and methamphetamines – have been seized at Cambodia's airports in recent years. But while the traffickers – many of them young, foreign women – have been slapped with steep sentencing, few ringleaders have been uncovered.

The Ministry of Labor on Tuesday announced that the number of workers leaving Cambodia for jobs abroad dropped by more than a third in 2013 compared to the year before, but experts warned yesterday that the ministry's figures did not represent the broader emigration picture.

While the ministry's data shows that the total number of Cambodian migrant workers abroad in 2013 was 22,300 – down 36 per cent from 34,804 in 2012 – the figures leave out the vast number of illegal Cambodian immigrants who have sought work abroad, estimated in 2012 to number 160,000 in Thailand alone.

Hou Vuthy, deputy director-general at the Ministry of Labor, said that though illegal emigration still occurs, other factors are also at play.

"As I have asked and examined from border officials, Cambodian workers still illegally cross to work in bordering countries," he said.

But, he added, it is also likely that the dip in legal emigration figures could be attributed to workers simply finding better jobs at home last year.

The roughly 8,800 workers in South Korea represented a slight rise over 2012, but it was the massive decline in legal workers in Thailand – down to 13,168 in 2013, compared to more than 26,300 in 2012 – that accounts for 2013's entire drop in legal workers abroad.

Last year's decline coincided with new Thai regulations that require Cambodian migrants seeking to work there to complete an official registration process or face deportation.

At the time, critics argued that the proposition was expensive – even with Thailand's attractive 9,000-baht ($274) monthly minimum wage – and corrupt, and would ultimately have the effect of forcing immigration underground, a prediction that appears to have been borne out, according to labour migration expert Andy Hall.

"The legal entry channels . . . are out of control, completely unregulated, expensive, not transparent and slow. Workers are at risk of falling into situations of debt bondage and even being trafficked through [these] formal channels," he said yesterday, via email.

"I doubt there has been any decrease in actual number of workers from Cambodia to Thailand, but just [a] decrease in using formal channels . . . Of course the informal channels are also as risky, if not more so, than the formal channels because of deceptive brokers, trafficking," he added.

Moeun Tola, head of the labour program at the Community Legal Education Center, also maintained that legal emigration had simply been supplanted by illegal emigration "because they think that it's easier to avoid the documents and spend less".

Pich Vanna, director of the Cambodian-Thai border relations office, said that Cambodians seeking to illegally emigrate often take up residence along the border until the time is right to cross.

"That's why it's difficult to arrest them or stop them, [and] why most Cambodian workers work there illegally," he said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STUART WHITE

Two Lao men and two ethnic Kuoy men were tried in Phnom Penh Municipal court yesterday for allegedly trafficking approximately two kilograms of methamphetamine.

The group was apprehended by undercover police officers to whom they tried selling the drugs in December 2012.

According to presiding judge Sous Sam Ath, Laotians Amphorn Koumphoan, 30, and Vongphim Khambai, 52, and Cambodians Nath Thorng, 36, and Nath Suth, 18, stand accused of smuggling the drugs across the Lao border into Cambodia.

"They have brought the drugs from the Cambodian-Lao border to Preah Vihear province to Phnom Penh. They were arrested by anti-drug police when they brought it to sell to undercover police," he said.

According to Captain Heap Daroath, chief of the Anti-Drug Police Unit in the Ministry of Interior, officers spent a month investigating and establishing a relationship with the group before they agreed to sell the drugs for an estimated $10,000.

In court, Vongphim said he was not a drug trafficker, but simply came to Cambodia to purchase medicine to treat a liver condition from which he suffers.

All four men denied the charges against them at court yesterday.

Villagers living in Mondulkiri's Sen Monorom district are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for the loss of thousands of protected resin trees, alleging that a land concessionaire company has been illegally razing community forest since 2012.

Four representatives of the Phnong ethnic group representing more than 160 villagers filed three complaints with rights group Adhoc, according to provincial coordinator Sok Rotha, calling for the provincial court and authorities' involvement in stopping Villas Development from illegally razing more community forest.

Ki Nhov, one of the four representatives who filed the complaints with Adhoc, said yesterday that Villas Development have been claiming the community forest was legally granted by the government.

"If the forest was granted, why don't we know anything about it? There is no demarcation yet but the company just said that," Nhov said, adding that villagers were seeking $250 per tree and that nearly 1,106 resin trees had been felled throughout the district since 2012, amounting to an income loss of $276,500 shouldered by villagers.

ELC Villas Development is co-owned by the wife of provincial deputy governor Yoem Luch, who could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Sok Khom, a manager at the company, said yesterday he was unaware of the complaints filed against the firm and that Villas Development was only operating on the land legally granted by the government.