Work Permit - Retroactive or not?

[tinom]

According to different news, the need of having a proper work permit will be enforced. (1995 law)
A type E (Business) visa is not a work permit as most of us barang had thought until recently.

The law is still not clear about one very important point:
French Embassy had an announcement saying that you only have to make it and pay for the current year, but they withdrawed it without further explanations.

According to the Labor Ministry here in Kampot, and as I did read on different forums, the year on which your first Visa E has been issued (even if on december 31st of that year) counts as the first year you have to pay retroactively! But you can read the opposite too!

I have nothing against the idea of having to pay for a work permit, as long as I am aware I have to do it, but I have a big problem on accepting to pay 4 years back while I heard of others paying just the current year.
On top, they told me I have to pay a $30 fee for an annual medical check. So we have to pay for a check, but we don't meet any doctor...

First we had in may a very polite visit with 4 officiers from Kampot immigration and police asking to get cleared on that permit, and at that time they said I would have to pay only for 2014... then I tryied to get that permit being sent from one office to another, then I was said I needed a paper saying I had left Sihanoukville where I was registered, one and half month I wait and call again and again for that paper... 4 months struggle to do my best to be all in order....
Finally I found the right office thanks to another barang indications... but they say I have 4 years to pay, 4x $100+$30 = $520

I hope you can share your eperience and knowledge or even contacts for people able to give a final answer about these "up to your face" fees.

[Sheryl]

For sure, you do not have to have a WP for every year you had an "E" visa...only if you were working. Lots of people with those visas were not employed, since it is the only long-term visa so far available. People retiring here etc.

But that is evidently not your situation. As you were employed, you were indeed supposed to have a WP all those years. Whether or not it can be retroactively issued, I don't know. But if they insist you obtain it retroactively I don't see what you can do but comply...

Not to scare you but the WP may not be the end of it. They may come after you for back taxes. Which IMO is what the enforcement of WP requirements is all about.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[rarky]

Anyone who believed their E-visa was the same thing as the WP must be very ignorant, or listened to some very poor advice from ill informed people.

[TheSiemReaper]

And... still the work permit malarkey goes on despite enforcement remaining at nearly zero on the ground. It's amazing the effect that a couple of scare stories in the press can have on people.

[Sheryl]

I've heard first hand accounts from many people of enforcement in Phnom Penh. Even officials coming to people homes and into their workplaces.