The Cambodian Red Cross plans to spend US$30,000 to build homes for 10 families who lost their homes in the recent flooding in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces, it said yesterday.

Uy Sam Arth, director of the disaster management unit at the Cambodian Red Cross, said that along with distributing food and supplies to evacuated families, the organisation planned to build 10 new homes at $3,000 each for families whose homes were destroyed by the recent flooding of the Mekong River.

Uy Sam Arth said that more than 1,500 families had been affected by floods in Stung Treng and more than 1,000 families had been affected in Kratie this month.

Water levels in the Mekong  River in Stung Treng and Kratie had subsided roughly a metre since last Friday, said Mao Hak, deputy general director of the technical department at the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology. However, Mao Hak added that water levels had risen slightly yesterday in both provinces.

“The water level has risen, but it is still under the alert level,” he said.

The water level has risen again but it is still under the alert level

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Water Resources, heavier-than-normal rainfall over the upper Mekong in Laos and Thailand caused severe flooding downstream in Cambodia this month.

Keo Vy, cabinet chief of the National Committee for Disaster Management, said that since the flooding began eight people had drowned in Kampong Cham province, three people in Kratie and one person in Prey Veng.

No drowning deaths had been reported in Stung Treng province, he said.

Meanwhile, a 50-year-old man drowned in Prey Veng province yesterday morning after he fell off a flood embankment into a canal in Prey Veng town, police officials said.

Provincial police chief Kann Narith said that 50-year-old Nith Hy, of village 8 in Prey Veng town’s Kampong Leav commune was walking across an embankment constructed to protect the town from flooding when he slipped into the water and disappeared.

“Police officers and members of the victim’s family have been searching for his body, but it still has not been recovered,” he said.