SAM Rainsy Party lawmaker Men Sothavarin has asked Prime Minister Hun Sen to provide farmland for poor residents and disabled military veterans in Kampong Thom province.

In a letter dated Thursday, the lawmaker said that 600 families evicted last December from the province’s Kraya commune to make way for a Vietnamese rubber company are facing serious food shortages because they have not been granted replacement land promised by the government.

The letter accuses the authorities of reneging on promises made in both January and April that the families would be given farmland. “The authority does not have any clear policy to resolve this case, just promised with a lie,” the letter said.

Kampong Thom provincial Governor Chhun Chhorn dismissed Men Sothavarin’s allegations, saying that authorities planned to give each family a 1-hectare plot of replacement farmland. “We are trying to provide land to them before the rainy season,” he said.