Dear Editor,

After living for more than seven years in Sihanoukville, I must say that the supply of electricity was almost perfect.

After all the shortcuts, frequency changes and not enough capacity, recently the whole system improved until the moment I received the new invoice covering the month of February.

The rate was increased by 27 percent. Earlier in your newspaper, we read about the planned increases but I can not remember reading anything about a 27 percent price increase.

For the tourist business, this is a huge increase. Most of the guesthouses and hotels cannot increase the daily room rate by this percentage without losing many guests.

Even worse, it is difficult for normal households. Rice, water and electricity are the first and basic needs for every family, and if you have to pay these kinds of percentages without a salary increase you will face a problem.

The government likes to have more and more tourists in our beautiful Cambodia, but instead of steady room rates, tourists will notice that future prices are increasing because of these kind of increases in basic costs. Besides the electricity, we noticed another increase of more than 30 percent for small bottles of water.

In some provinces the supplier of electricity became Vietnam, which resulted in a decrease of the electricity rate; so it might be a good idea for the local government to think about an alternative way to avoid higher room rates and less tourists.

I hope that one day I can write that life is really perfect in Cambodia.

Jan C de Jongh

Sihanoukville

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