Cambodia begins evicting floating homes amid protests

[geovalin]

reuters

 

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh on Saturday (Jun 12) began overseeing the dismantling of "floating home" communities on the banks of the Tonle Sap River over the objections of longtime residents who say they have nowhere else to go. For generations, the floating wooden houseboats of Phnom Penh have been both livelihood and way of life for mostly ethnic Vietnamese families, home to fish farming and interconnected by warrens of hand-built bridges interspersed with sunken poles and small boats.

 

 

"Our ancestors have always been here," said Kith Dong, 54, as he and relatives dismantled his home of consisting of a grayling timber platform with a sloped tin roof off the shore of Phnom Penh's Prek Pnov district. He said the city order did not give his family enough time to relocate.

 

"If they extended by a few more months, we would have time to build a home," he said. The Phnom Penh Municipality says the communities amount to floating slums that are eyesores and health hazards, with trash bags and raw sewage floating alongside the houseboats.

 

read more https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/cambodia-phnom-penh-tonle-sap-floating-home-eviction-15000354

[whaleboneman]

Moving the poor for the SEA Games. Please boycott.

[Yme]

Good. Well overdue. A blight on the riverscape. 6-8,000 people <deleted>ting and throwing their waste and trash into the river everyday. Supposed "boat houses" sitting on concrete piers. illegally and dangerously connected electricity. Sections of the river blocked for fish farms. They weren't there in the French times (Phnom Penh was clean then. The sidewalks were side walks that you could walk along). 20, 30, 40 years of living on the river and taking, contributing nothing. And every year more and more "family" members coming from Vietnam to join them. 
Time to move them on. The place is a putrid <deleted>hole. 

Besides, they can't get the Chinese submarines up the river with all of those obstructions  ???? 

 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Yme

[unblocktheplanet]

Pretty heartless, esp in a pandemic. These working-class folks should have been supplied with houses by govt.

[Yme]

On 6/14/2021 at 12:33 PM, unblocktheplanet said:

Pretty heartless, esp in a pandemic. These working-class folks should have been supplied with houses by govt.

Why should they be provided with houses by the government? They're not Khmer, they're Vietnamese who have been bludging there for free and contributing nothing except <deleted> and rubbish into the waterways for 40 years and still continue importing relatives.

Whoever says let them stay and give them free housing cite your own home city as an example where 6-8,000 could just squat on a public facility for 40 years and throw their trash and <deleted> wherever they want. If you wouldn't welcome it in your home city then don't advocate as being good for Cambodia.