Phnom Penh city lost half of its rice fields

Friday, March 7, 2008
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

An official from the agriculture department of the city of Phnom Penh said that rice fields belonging to the people along the suburb of the city, amount only to 4,000 hectares at the end of 2007. Beyond that, all the former rice field lands were developed as industrial zones and housing development. Pheng Sokham, the director of the agriculture department of the city of Phnom Penh, told Rasmei Kampuchea on 05 March that, in 1999, the extend of the rice field lands amount to 11,000 hectares, and it shrunk to 7,300 hectares in 2001. Each year, the loss of rice field lands amount to about 1,000 hectares, and among the 4,000-hectare remaining, the majority of them have changed ownerships already. Pheng Sokham said that the rice field land in the suburb are very expensive, for example, in Sak Sampov, 1 hectare of rice field land cost more that $500,000. He said that people living in the suburbs used to have a hard life as farmers, but the majority of them are all rich now when they sell their lands. He said that this situation does not affect food shortage at all, because turning rice field lands into industrial zones and housing development is more beneficial than using them to plant rice.

Siem Reap villagers accused the Krek rubber plantation Co. of grabbing their lands

25 October 2007
By Sav Yuth
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

A number of villagers form Angkanh village, Svay Leu commune, Siem reap province, are unhappy with the Krek rubber plantation Co. which is currently clearing forest lands to plant rubber trees. The villagers claimed that the company is also clearing their rice fields and the authority does not dare resolve this issue.

On Thursday 25 October, a group of villagers publicly claimed that the company used mechanical equipments to clear several hectares of their rice fields yesterday. “5-hectare of my rice fields were cleared yesterday, please help resolve this issue for me, if they clear and take over all my rice fields, what do I have left? 3-hectare of my rice fields were cleared by the Krek rubber plantation company, they destroyed all my rice crop,” the villagers said.

The group of villagers said that several hundreds of families are very concerned about the land clearing operation by the company to plant rubber trees. The villagers had also complained to the local officials, but no officials dare come out to resolve this issue. However, the company rejected the villagers’ claims saying that they are not ture.

Siek Pisith, the deput director of Krek rubber plantation, said that his company did not touch any rice field belonging to the villagers. However, Siek Pisith said that after the harvest season, he will re-organize all these rice field lands into farms for the villagers to live in and work as laborers, and if the villagers do not accept the company conditions, they are simply not allowed to work on the lands as their properties.

Siek Pisith said: “The lands they are using for their rice fields, (the company) did not touch them yet. But the problem of the lands occupied by the villagers, the ministry of agriculture ordered the provincial authority to go check and resolve this issue, because all these lands cannot be claimed as the villagers’ property, they are all located along the road.”

Ho Sophany, the Svay Leu deputy district governor, said that up to now, the district authority did not receive any complaint from the villagers yet. When the district authority will receive the complaint, then it will resolve this issue with the company regarding the land encroachments.

Nevertheless, Suos Narin, an investigator for the Adhoc human rights organization for the province of Siem Reap, said that, recently, he received a complaint bearing 140 thumbprints from the villagers who claimed that 620-hectare of their rice fields will be grabbed by the rubber company soon, and that there is no authority which would venture out to resolve this issue, and quite to the contrary, all that the authorities did was to prevent the villagers from protesting.

Suos Narin said: “It affects a number of rice fields and orchard fields … We did not see any resolution to this issue, all that we saw were arrests made against villagers who went into the forest to cut trees, or to rummage on the lands located in the Krek rubber plantation zone.”

The Krek rubber plantation is a company belonging to the state. In mid-2007, the government provided 9,100-hectare of lands located in Svay leu district, Siem Reap province, to the company to plant new rubber trees, following the shortage of cultivable land in Kampong Cham province.