PM will hand-deliver titles [… if he does not change his mind again – Remember the ELC ban?]

Wednesday, 05 September 2012
Chhay Channyda
The Phnom Penh Post

Prime Minister Hun Sen will personally deliver land titles to residents in Kratie province’s Snuol district on September 21 following the completion of the land measuring mission by volunteer youth there.

“I will go to Kratie’s Snuol district to distribute land titles for these residents for the first time. They are not provisional but complete land titles for ownership,” Hun Sen said during a graduation ceremony held at Koh Pich yesterday.

“Today all granted land titles following the measurement are declared complete, so the people in all those areas don’t need to face a transitional period,” the premier continued.

Just three months ago, some 2,000 student volunteers were dispatched across the country to measure land for families who claim to live in areas overlapping economic and other land concessions, though the success of how this would be implemented has been a point of conjecture since the ambitious plan was announced.

According to the premier’s order, land titles have been granted in three forms of disputed land: concession land granted to private companies since 2000, economic land concessions and state land covered by forest that has been designated as such since 2002 and which residents have occupied since.

Hun Sen again touted the ambitious figures: 1.2 million hectares of land measured across 178 communes for 350,000 families, but since the project began, only 10 per cent of the disputed land has been measured.

The completed land measurements in Snuol district have, as required, have been posted at the district hall for the past month for villagers or companies to lodge objections, Hun Sen highlighted, so the land titles given to villagers would be complete with no other avenues for protest.

Men Vanna, Snuol district governor, said he is preparing 930 land titles to issue to the residents living in Srae Cha and Pi Thnou commune.

“The land in these two communes involves state land and economic land concession of the CIV private company. Six hundred families will be granted land titles,” he said, explaining that often one family would receive more than one land title for houses and farming plots.

Kratie-based Adhoc observer Samrith Vanna said the measuring project in Kratie had gone smoothly in Snuol district, although it was continuing in Chhloung district.

In his speech, Prime Minister Hun Sen also said he will publish 200,000 copies of the basic principles on land and sea border issues with Vietnam that he presented in his marathon five-hour speech to the National Assembly on August 9.