The country’s fire chief claimed firefighters had taken no bribes for 10 years, after Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Tuesday criticized the practice of officers arriving at a fire only to negotiate a price to put it out.
A 21-year-old woman says she feels like a “newborn” after arriving home to Phnom Penh last week, rescued from China alongside nine other sex-trafficking victims. The woman was 17 when she left Cambodia hoping for a good job, but became entrapped in years of abuse.
The Interior Ministry has said it is investigating an anonymous complaint accusing Takeo provincial deputy police chief Hin Sok Kheng of extortion.
A soldier who was removed from Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit over his involvement in a land dispute has this month been made an adviser to Interior Minister Sar Kheng, according to government letters and court documents.
Authorities in Vietnam have reported more trafficking victims crossing from Cambodia, the Interior Ministry’s counter-trafficking chief said, as the global economic slowdown creates a desperation for jobs while closed borders due to Covid-19 elevate the dangers of migration.
The number of traffic accidents dropped 23 percent in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period last year, according to government figures, with an expert suggesting that there had been fewer cars on the road and that stricter penalties were working as a deterrent.
The first of 10 Mondulkiri public officials implicated in illegal land grabbing in the province has been transferred from his position — a warning to others, according to a government spokesperson, but for local rights monitors a sign of continuing impunity over imprisonable crimes.
Three activists — including a monk — were arrested over two days at a series of small protests ongoing in Phnom Penh, with the Interior Ministry ordering action against two groups “causing chaos in society.”
Interior Minister Sar Kheng has temporarily suspended a provincial police official for an unpublicized offense, after the officer was flagged for investigation and then cleared by the Anti-Corruption Unit last year.
A new prison building that was to have been reserved for rich inmates willing to pay to be detained in relative comfort has been put under government control, the Interior Ministry’s prisons department spokesman said.
Hundreds of people are in lockdown in a casino in Kandal province and a hotel complex in Sihanoukville as provincial authorities are preparing more treatment and quarantine centers amid the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreak to date.
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