Kratie villagers reject land offer + Families in Kampong Speu await payments

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Kratie villagers reject land offer

Fri, 30 May 2014

Khouth Sophak Chakrya

Protesters from Kratie province who have spent more than a week in a Phnom Penh pagoda while demanding authorities resolve their land row yesterday rejected an offer from the government of 750 hectares.

Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Khuong Sreng announced yesterday that more than 400 families in an area of Kratie’s Snuol district would be given the land as a social land concession (SLC) and were expected to leave the pagoda and return home.

But representatives of the families said after a meeting with officials at the Samaki Rainsy pagoda in Meanchey district that the land was not big enough for them to grow crops on.

“Giving us only 750 hectares does not equate to the real size of the land we have lost, so we cannot accept it,” community representative Nguon Vibol said.

Villagers have been in dispute with Vietnamese rubber company Binh Phoeuk 2 over more than 2,000 hectares of land they lived and farmed on, Vibol said.

Khan Chamnan, Kratie’s deputy governor, said villagers had until June 5 to return home and submit letters to the government requesting a portion of the 750 hectares.

“If the deadline passes, the authorities will consider that the families have enough land on which to live, so the case will be closed,” he said.

But the villagers said they will continue submitting petitions asking for at least 3 hectares for each family.

City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche said villagers who stay in Phnom Penh past the deadline can expect to be met with “legal action”.

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Families in Kampong Speu await payments

Fri, 30 May 2014

Sen David

Representatives of some 250 families who lost their land to a company in Kampong Speu province filed a complaint with Adhoc yesterday, saying they have yet to receive compensation, even after land measurement volunteers allegedly promised a resolution if villagers voted for the ruling party in last year’s elections.

Soa Pom, 52, one of 60 community representatives, said the dispute between Master International company and the 250 families in Phnom Sruoch district’s Taing Samrong commune began in 2006, when the company took some 950 hectares of the community’s land with the complicity of local authorities.

“Before the election, volunteer [land measurement] students told us to vote for the CPP [Cambodian People’s Party] to get a resolution, but after the election, we never got a resolution,” she said, adding that the village complied with the instructions. “We filed complaints to all the authorities, but in the end, we just got back ugly blame.”

Pom said villagers filed complaints to the then-governor of Kampong Speu province, Kong Heang, and to then-commune chief Piev Lon, as well as members of the officials’ families who also signed the documents selling the land to Master International.

Fellow representative Sao Yuy, 64, said that when local authorities told residents that the land would be sold, they naively expected to receive a share of the proceeds.

“They are like robbers. They robbed our farmland that we lived on and farmed since 1985,” she said. “For [almost] 10 years, while we had the dispute, I never slept well. I always thought, if they grab our farmland, where is our children’s future?”

Ny Chakrya, head of Adhoc‘s monitoring section, said yesterday that his organisation couldn’t even find out what business the firm was in, and that paperwork authorising the sale lacked the usual signatures of high-ranking officials.

“Some of the sale documents – I wonder why only commune and village chiefs signed the agreement without high-level authorities and land management officials,” he said, urging the government to find a resolution to prove its commitment to land reform.

Current Taing Samroung commune chief Kong Sern, who wasn’t involved in the sale, said that “high-level authorities” were investigating the dispute.

Contact details for the company were not available yesterday.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/families-kampong-speu-await-payments