India’s anti-alcohol laws: Inspector Killjoy

 

A crackdown highlights the problems with a modern city’s archaic rules

Jun 23rd 2012 | MUMBAI | from the print edition 

IF A Bollywood scriptwriter had to dream up a killjoy cop, he would base him on Vasant Dhoble. Over the past month Mumbai’s police have been shutting down parties and confiscating bars’ music systems in a drive to regulate the city’s nightlife. Leading the drive has been Mr Dhoble, the head of the city police’s “social services” division.

A stocky figure in his 50s sporting a moustache, Mr Dhoble has gained cartoon-villain status among hip Mumbaikers. An anti-Dhoble Facebook group has attracted over 20,000 members. Urbane newspapers witheringly describe him as a teetotal vegetarian. Bloggers have shared video footage that shows him roughing up employees at a juice bar, armed with a hockey stick.

The crackdown intensified on May 20th, when officers broke up a party at a hotel. Guests were rounded up and blood-tested. Police cited the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949, which states that even customers must have a permit to booze. Mr Dhoble is making a speciality of dusting off old edicts—alcohol was banned in the state of Maharashtra, which the city of Mumbai (then Bombay) dominates, until 1963. Many prohibition-era laws have not been updated, yet until recently were rarely enforced.

Mr Dhoble or his officers have also shown up at five of the city’s high-end bars this month, slapping fines on them for overcrowding or for allowing DJs to perform without the correct licences. At another bar, some women customers were detained on suspicion of being prostitutes, leading to a defamation lawsuit against Mr Dhoble that was dismissed on June 20th. Bar-owners say turnout has dropped as nervous customers have chosen to stay at home.

Mr Dhoble’s crackdown highlights a wider grievance among Mumbai’s business crowd, all of whom complain about archaic and fiddly rules (be they citywide, statewide or national laws). Bar-owners say they need up to 20 licences to run a single drinking hole, and up to three-dozen if music is also to be allowed. Property developers grumble that they have to provide the original plan of a building they wish to overhaul. One art dealer is fed up with the lengthy process by which sculptures for export must officially be confirmed as not being antiques—even contemporary pieces in fibreglass. 

The World Bank ranked India 132nd out of 183 countries in last year’s “Ease of Doing Business” report.

Mr Dhoble, at least, appears honest. But outdated rules create opportunities for graft—one reason they remain in place. A bar-owner says that when setting up a venue last year, Mumbai officials expected a bribe equal to the cost of each licence they issued. One licence cost over $6,000. Officials ask the art dealer for under-the-table fees before sculptures for export can be signed off. A property lawyer says he just thinks of corruption as part of the process—itself an example of how a supposedly go-ahead city can stay stuck firmly in the past.

Young Cambodians cut their lifelines for a wage

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

Phearun Sreng

 

Tien Vireak was standing alone in the dark, sleepily holding his umbrella. As a security guard, his job is to stay awake when everyone else is sleeping.

He is only 24, but would be happy to take off his uniform and find a better job.

For people like Vireak, however, this is the only option.

“I don’t have a high level education,” he said. “I am also the son of a farmer.”

With a salary ranging from US$90 to $100 per month, his job requires a high level of responsibility and courage.

“As a security guard, I have to work alone every night, standing in front of the company from 6pm until 6am,” Vireak said. “I cannot even think of falling asleep, I am too afraid someone will rob something, like a car or other things that the company owns. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to pay the company back for what was lost.”

This is a lesson Vireak learnt in the past, when he lost a phone battery and $27 was deducted from his already poor salary.

To make his job even harder, gang violence can be dangerous at night and bad weather very unpleasant.

In order to send support to their families who live in the countryside, workers have to make many sacrifices, especially by saving up on rent and food. This usually leads to poor hygienic living conditions and unhealthy diets unable to provide the basic nutritional elements to keep the strength to work.

Kuy Im, a 31-year-old factory worker, makes an average of $70 a month. In order to survive, he has to cut his daily ration of food. Needless to say, eating boiled rice (around 1000 riel, or twenty-five cents a cup) every day might be good for his wallet, but dangerous for his health.

Workers are also being put in danger because of unsafe working practices. Last month, The Post reported that 107 factory employees who were sent to hospital after fainting due to protracted exposure to poisoning chemicals while manufacturing gloves.

“I have been working in a factory for 10 years,” Im said. “But I am still concerned about my Chinese bosses’ attitude. They just don’t care, for them workers are worth nothing. They do nothing else except blame us and look down on us, even when we are right.”

Unlike factory workers, construction workers might not be exposed to toxic or poisonous chemicals, but their work place is not much safer. Without the proper protection and equipment, a construction site can easily become lethal.

“Carrying heavy stuff is not a problem,” Bun Thoeurn, 31, who started working for a construction company at the age of 15, said. “It’s the lack of protection that worries me. Dying just like that, it just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Thoeurn has been fortunate enough not to get injured so far. But witnessing people falling from buildings or being hit by electric shocks tells him how easily these things can happen without safety measures.

Many construction workers get injured in road accidents while moving from one building site to another. On top of that, if injured, their salary is often too low to cover the medical expenses.

Bun Ying, Communications Officer of the International Labour Organization in Cambodia, also expressed his concern about the risks these workers have to face daily.

“Although working conditions have been improved recently, there are still a lot of challenges for workers. Health problems and poor safety at work are examples that prove that the quality of their working conditions is still not high enough if compared with what they earn,” Ying Said.

Although the textile industry is booming, and more factories are being built every day, companies still don’t consider their worker’s health and safety as a fundamental issue, he added.

In order to achieve higher productivity however, benefits are important. Not only will that attract workers but it will motivate them to produce more and want to keep their job. With better working policies, companies would also gain a better reputation in the market, Ying explained.

But for the moment, current working conditions only make workers want to leave and try to find something else.

“When I’ll have enough savings I will start my own business,” Vireak said. “I want to guarantee an appropriate standard of living for myself, one that a worker like me doesn’t have the privilege to access.”

Interfering officials arrested

Thursday, 12 July 2012

Military police in Stung Treng province arrested five government officials yesterday after they forcibly stopped student volunteers from measuring property lines as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s national initiative to help settle land disputes.

The volunteers, mostly university students, were measuring land for villagers in conflict with companies that had received economic land concessions in Samaki commune.

A deputy commander with the military police who didn’t want to be named said that five officials from the Ministry of National Defence and the Council of Ministers were arrested. He said some of them had positions as legal advisers to the government.

“The case involves high ranking officials – it is too difficult to find information as authorities are willing to keep information from spreading,” said Hour Sam Ol, an investigator for the rights group Adhoc in Stung Treng.

Stung Treng provincial governor Loy Sophat said that the dispute started because a “group of people”, whom he didn’t identify, tried to force the volunteer students to measure land for their own development purposes. Apparently, they wanted to plant an orchard.

“Thus, what they did is contrary to the government policy,” he said.

Sophat declined to identify the group because he said he needed to make contact with military police officers first.

Mobile phones could replace credit cards

Thursday, 12 July 2012

Gregory Pellechi

 

Mobile money transfer service WING is preparing to launch a mobile wallet service later this year, and ACLEDA Unity is preparing to expand its own mobile services, enabling people to quickly pay for things just by touching their phone to a point-of-sale terminal.

Near-field communications (NFC) technology will be the next addition to WING’s mobile platform to be used for smaller payments, such as purchasing a cup of coffee, as the company tests the service later this year, according to WING chief operations officer Anthony Perkins.

“What we really want to tackle here is near-field communication like the Oyster Card in London or similar services offered in Japan and Australia,” he said.

NFC technology, which one in five smartphones will have by next year, according to Juniper Research, will enable mobile phones to act as cashless wallets. Users will simply swipe their phone over a terminal to complete a transaction.

Sok Sophea, senior vice-president of marketing for ACLEDA Bank, said ACLEDA would be introducing additional mobile services to its Unity mobile banking facility, which is utilised by 68,000 customers. She did not say when the new features would be available, however.

“The system is updated, and only the customers need to be introduced to the new features,” Sophea said.

For customers without smartphones, WING would provide a sticker embedded with an NFC chip that could be placed under an ordinary phone’s case to enable WING’s mobile wallet, Perkins said.

Seventy-four per cent of the population in urban and semi-urban areas of Cambodia had mobile phones, 23 per cent of which were smartphones, Laurent Notin, general manager of Indochina Research, said.

“I think there is more potential in Cambodia for mobile banking and NFC technology than for credit or debit cards as a payment tool, considering a mobile phone is now a commodity and the penetration of mobile phones is significantly higher than the penetration of credit or debit cards.

“Cambodian people are already familiar with mobile banking. NFC technology is an obvious next development for a company like WING.”

Notin said Cambodia’s high reliance on cash for transactions might slow propagation of the mobile wallet system.

“One of the challenges the industry will have to overcome is the high reliance Cambodians have on cash.

“There is a difference between sending money to support the family’s living or for a loan, and using a mobile phone or credit card to pay for a product or service.”

WING’s Perkins said plastic credit cards were not working in Cambodia at all.

“Plastic just hasn’t taken off. I think Cambodia will jump from cash to mobile payments,” he said.

Ten per cent of WING’s 400,000 customers would be classified as affluent or middle-class, in keeping with the socio-economic divide of the country, and some even kept a couple of thousand dollars on their WING account, Perkins said.

Anne Guerineau, general manager of Gloria Jean’s Coffees, the first international coffee-chain franchise to enter Cambodia, said her company did not accept credit or debit cards at the moment.

“We don’t do cards for the moment. But it’s true we’ve started to get requests from guests,” she said.

Guerineau said she would welcome the ability to pay through NFC technology.

“It could be good for all those younger people who get pocket money to spend from their affluent parents.

“This is our target. Gloria Jean’s brought a new concept of coffee retail into the country with the ‘self-service’ style, so this would go along with the modern way of life our guests enjoy.”

Cellcard chief operations officer Kay Lot could not be reached for comment and Sok Sophea from ACLEDA had nothing to say on WING’s plans.

WING was also looking to launch an online payment gateway for Cambodia early next year, Perkins said.

“It’s in our IT pipeline over the next six months. Regardless of whether the market is ready, we will work on it.”
 

‘Language’ holds up South China Sea pact

Thursday, 12 July 2012

Bridget Di Certo and Cheang Sokha

 

The world is watching ASEAN foreign ministers as they scramble to reach a consensus on a regional Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, officials at the summit in Phnom Penh acknowledged yesterday.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said that consensus among ASEAN members was a “work in progress”. “We are getting there,” he said.

The major hold-up is “agreement on language,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretary of State Kao Kim Hourn said at a press conference yesterday evening.

“The foreign ministers are working on their joint communiqué, but are working on agreement on the language.”

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said ASEAN discussions on the CoC were already having a “calming affect” on the international community.

“The fact that they are all committed to work on the code of conduct seriously in good faith . . . we have already achieved a milestone,” Pitsuwan said. “Earlier on, there was a reluctance on some parties to engage or not to engage and to engage … informally or engage periodically.”

Earlier in the week, ASEAN officials announced that officials had already drafted key elements of the CoC and these elements would then be taken to informal discussion with China.

However, China’s Vice Foreign Minister, Fu Ying, told reporters that there had been a “suggestion” from ASEAN ministers to launch discussions with China on the Code.

“The Chinese minister would like to give a serious consideration of the proposals for exploring the possibilities of a discussion of CoC,” Ying said, stressing that engagement would hinge on all members of ASEAN obeying and implementing the current Declaration of Conduct.

The politics of gender in Cambodia

Thursday, 12 July 2012

Xiaoqing Pi

 

 Twenty-eight-year-old Tek Nim, a Sam Rainsy Party member and newly elected commune chief in Omlaing commune, in Kampong Speu province’s Thpong district, poses for a photograph. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post

 

 Pich Srey Pho’s involvement in politics may have contributed to the demise of her marriage, but that hasn’t stopped her from encouraging other women to follow in her footsteps and become a commune council member.

Pich Srey Pho, who represents the Cambodian People’s Party in Pursat, said cultural stereotyping was hindering women’s involvement in politics.

“My husband asked me to stay at home,” she said.

Pich Srey Pho didn’t – she went out to campaign instead – and is now divorced.

Because of such gender barriers, parties need to make more effort to promote women’s involvement in politics, party representatives and NGOs said in a meeting yesterday.

The Cambodian Millennium Development Goals include a target for 25 per cent of commune seats to be filled by women by 2015. Less than 18 per cent went to women at this year’s commune election.

“Our society has not seen the benefits of women participating in politics,” said Ros Sopheap, executive director of the NGO Gender and Development for Cambodia.

Women have proved themselves in fields such as education and many have the potential to make a difference in politics, she said.

At just 28, Tek Nim, the newly elected Omlaing commune chief in Kampong Speu province’s Thpong district, is an example.

“I didn’t pay attention to politics,” she said. “But then we were faced with land grabbing.” She joined the Sam Rainsy Party and won her seat last month.

Twenty-one per cent of the CPP’s commune council members are women – the highest among all parties.

Pich Srey Pho attributes her party’s success to its women’s communications skills and transparency. Both Funcinpec and the Human Rights Party believe CPP leads simply because it has more resources.

What the parties can agree on is that the perception politics is “unwomanly” is something that needs changing.

A good start would be to pay women politicians more, Pich Srey Pho said, as many were getting less than most husbands can offer to keep their wives at home.

កៅ គឹមហួនៈ កិច្ចប្រជុំកំពូលវេទិកាតំបន់អាស៊ី ARF ផ្តោតជាសំខាន់លើបញ្ហា៦

 Thursday, 12 July 2012 19:58 ដោយៈ សយ សុភា-បាន ចក់

ភ្នំពេញ៖ លោក កៅ គឹមហួន រដ្ឋលេខាធិការក្រសួង ការបរទេសកម្ពុជា និងជាអ្នកនាំពាក្យ កិច្ចប្រជុំកំពូលវេទិកាតំបន់ អាស៊ី ហៅកាត់ថា ARF បានថ្លែងឱ្យដឹងក្រោយពីកិច្ចប្រជុំចង្អៀត និងកិច្ចប្រជុំពេញអង្គ ដោយបានសង្កត់ធ្ងន់លើបញ្ហាតំបន់ និងអន្តរជាតិ ជាពិសេសបញ្ហា សន្តិសុខពិភពលោក។

ថ្លែងប្រាប់នៅក្នុងសន្និសីទសារព័ត៌មានក្រោយកិច្ចប្រជុំ នៅថ្ងៃព្រហស្បតិ៍ទី១២ ខែកក្កដា ឆ្នាំ២០០១២ ឱ្យដឹងថា កិច្ចប្រជុំនោះ ផ្តោតជាសំខាន់លើបញ្ហាចំនួន៦៖

១. រដ្ឋមន្រ្តីការបរទេស នៃ ARF បានស្វាគមន៍ការកែទម្រង់នៅក្នុងប្រទេសមីយ៉ាន់ម៉ា និងបាន អំពាវនាវឱ្យបន្ត ការលើកលែងការដាក់ទណ្ឌកម្ម។

២. រដ្ឋមន្រ្តីការបរទេស នៃ ARF បូករូមទាំង EU (សហគមន៍អឺរ៉ុប) បានគាំទ្រតួនាទីស្នូលរបស់ អាស៊ាន នៅក្នុង តំបន់ និងចង់បន្តឱ្យអាស៊ាន។

៣. ពាក់ព័ន្ធនឹងបញ្ហាកូរ៉េខាងជើង រដ្ឋមន្រ្តីការបរទេសនៃ ARFបានស្នើឱ្យគ្រប់ភាគីពាក់ ព័ន្ធទាំងអស់ គោរព សេចក្តីសម្រេចរបស់ក្រុមប្រឹក្សាសន្តិសុខអង្គការសហប្រជាជាតិ និងបង្កលក្ខណៈងាយស្រួលឱ្យមានសន្តិភាព និងការចរចារ៦ភាគីឡើងវិញផងដែរ។

៤. ពាក់ព័ន្ធនឹងបញ្ហាសមុទ្រចិនខាងត្បូង រដ្ឋមន្រ្តីការបរទេស នៃ ARF ក៏បានអំពាវនាវឱ្យភាគី ពាក់ព័ន្ធទាំងអស់ គោរពសន្ធិសញ្ញាស្តីពីមិត្តនៅអាស៊ីអាគ្នេយ៍ និងឯកសារគោលមួយចំនួនដូច ជាច្បាប់អន្តរជាតិ និងច្បាប់ សមុទ្ររបស់អង្គការសហប្រជាជាតិ និងសេរីភាពនៃនាវាចរណ៍។

៥. រដ្ឋមន្រ្តីការបរទេសនៃ ARF ក៏បានផ្លាស់ប្តូរទស្សនៈយោបល់ស្តី ពីបញ្ហាអន្តរជាតិនានាផងដែរ។

៦. រដ្ឋមន្រ្តីការបរទេសនៃ ARF ក៏ផ្តោតជាសំខាន់នៃគ្រោះមហន្តរាយធម្មជាតិផងដែរដើម្បីធ្វើយ៉ាង ធានាថា វេទិកាតំបន់អាស៊ី ចូលរូមចំណែកដោះស្រាយ ក៏ដូចជាឆ្លើយតបទៅគ្រោះមហន្តរាយតំបន់ នោះក៏ព្រោះតែតំបន់ អាស៊ីអាគ្នេយ៍នេះ ជាតំបន់ងាយរងគ្រោះជាងគេ៕

Prime Minister Hun Sen's Message in the World People Day