Cambodia seeks UN help in its fight against drugs
Cambodia seeks UN help in its fight against drugs
PHNOM PENH (Agencies): Cambodia asked the United Nations yesterday for help in its fight against drug abuse and trafficking.
Cambodia's co-premier Hun Sen made the request in talks with Giorgio Giacomelli, executive director of the United Nations' International Drug Control Program (UNDCP), who is visiting Cambodia.
"The government requested the UN representative... to train our technical drug staff very clearly how to identify different kinds of drugs," Nouv Kanun, secretary of state of the council of ministers, told Reuters.
Hun Sen also asked for help in cutting the flow of drugs through Cambodia, he said. Giacomelli had promised to help as much as possible, he said.
UNDCP officials say traffickers increasingly use Cambodia as a transshipment point for heroin from the Golden Triangle opium- growing region where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet.
Meanwhile, prompted by reports of massive truancy and gambling and fighting among high-school students, police here have raided and closed eight snooker parlors located near schools, a report said yesterday.
Nearly 300 snooker balls and about 100 snooker cues as well as video games have been seized since the beginning of the month since teachers complained about large numbers of their students skipping class to frequent the parlors, the Khmer-language Rasmei Kampuchea (Light of Cambodia) newspaper reported.
Acting under a regulation that prohibits snooker clubs and video arcades from operating within 150 meters of schools, the police returned the confiscated equipment to its owners after they signed affidavits saying they would move their operations, the paper said.
Snooker has become highly popular with Cambodians, especially young men, as the country has become more prosperous following more than two decades of civil war.
Hundreds of snooker clubs, many of them catering to the upscale market, have opened in the capital in the past two years while smaller, seedier streetside snooker stands remain immensely popular.