Source: Khmer Times
Police yesterday confronted more than 200 villagers in Svay Rieng province as they tried to occupy land at the centre of a long-running dispute with a development company.
More than 20 officers attended the incident in Ampil commune, Romeas Hek district.
The villagers are unhappy because the government granted NK Venture special permission to build a sugar plantation on the 670 hectares in 2010, but it has still done nothing with the land. Continue reading
Source: Phnom Penh Post
The sprawling 50-hectare area in Pursat primed for an organic market and borey project. Phirun Pov
It takes three hours by car to get to the quiet province of Pursat from Phnom Penh, winding westwards along approximately 200 kilometres on National Road 5. Recently, though, the sleepy town has been stirring under some ongoing developments in the form of a combined borey and organic market project.
Slated to be the second largest organic fruit and Continue reading
Source: Phnom Penh Post
Kampong Cham will soon be connected to Tboung Khmum via a new bridge. Moeun Nhean
A bridge being constructed over the Mekong River will connect the provinces of Kampong Cham and Tboung Khmum once completed.
Nou Vannak, director of the Ministry of Public Works and Continue reading
Source: The Cambodia Daily
The government yesterday launched the first phase of a project to help 15,000 farming families commercialize their operations and bring their produce—rice, cassava, chickens and silk—to market.
“The supply and demand in the country is not balanced—like with vegetables, so there are imports to fill the demand,” Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak said at the event yesterday at the Commerce Ministry in Phnom Penh. “We need to understand and organize a system to boost the harvests of these crops.”
The project, Accelerating Inclusive Markets for Smallholders, has two components: building infrastructure to help farmers, and offering special microfinance deals, including longer terms and 20 percent government subsidies.
Meng Sakphuseth, country program Continue reading
Source: Phnom Penh Post
Community members gather outside the Banteay Meanchey Provincial Hall demanding a resolution to long-standing land disputes. Facebook
Almost 100 people from Boeung Snor village gathered at Banteay Meanchey’s Provincial Hall yesterday, demanding that provincial authorities resolve a 13-year-old dispute involving land promised to a group of Khmer Rouge defectors by the government in 1997.
Boeung Snor village representative and former Khmer Continue reading
Source: The Cambodia Daily
The scene outside the National Assembly building in 2013. (Siv Channa)
At least 30 villagers from Oddar Meanchey province who say their land is being encroached upon were blocked by Daun Penh district authorities on Monday as they attempted to march to the National Assembly to deliver a petition asking for the premier’s intervention, they said.
A group of 122 families Continue reading
Source: Phnom Penh Post
Claiming that district authorities destroyed their crops with bulldozers in February to evict them from their land, villagers representing 25 families from Oddar Meanchey’s Anlong Veng district yesterday petitioned the National Assembly to grant them land titles. Village representative Sat Borath said the area is home to more than 100 families, each of which inhabits and farms between 1.5 and 5 hectares of the disputed land.
When district authorities offered to grant each family 1,600 square metres of land in exchange for resettlement, said Borath, 25 families refused. Anlong Veng District Administration Chief Ngoun Lin said the conflict arose because the villagers reside illegally on state land. ‘We do not want a dispute so we arranged them [new] land divided into plots,’ said Lin.
Anlong Veng Commune Chief Vong Pheak placed the number of families who refused resettlement at 35. ‘They said they want [the] national level to solve the problem,’ he said.
Acknowledging that the villagers may have settled on state land, Adhoc Provincial Coordinator Srey Naren nevertheless disagreed with the approach of local authorities, saying they should permit the villagers to stay on land they have inhabited for years. ‘It could be unfair if the authority takes their land,’ he said.
