Letter to premier

About 500 families from three communes in Siem Reap province’s Chi Kraeng district are seeking the prime minister’s intervention in a dispute with a rubber company over 1,000 hectares of land.

Siem Reap provincial governor Chan Sophal said on Wednesday that Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Seang Nam and Siem Reap provincial governor Sou Phirin delivered a letter addressed to Prime Minister Hun Sen via his son Hun Many on Monday.

The letter urged the premier to intervene on behalf of the villagers in their land dispute against the Ken Company, a private rubber firm.

District governor Pork Sereyrothmony said the company was granted a land concession in 2006, but did not start razing the area until last year.

“This dispute started because villagers have no land ownership documents to show to the company, thus the Ken Company thought it was government land,” Pork Sereyrothmony said.

Attempts to resolve the issue through negotiations with government officials, villagers and company representatives in March were unsuccessful, Kok Thloak Loeu commune chief Touch Try said yesterday.

The company had agreed to cede the land to villagers if the government provided proof it belonged to them, he said.