Contractor Says Senior Official Approved Siem Reap Land Swap
The head of a construction firm that was involved in a massive land swap with Siem Reap’s provincial government in 2010 defended the deal on Friday saying orders for the move of government offices and civil servants—which is now being reversed—came directly from the national government. Siem Reap provincial officials last week blamed former provincial governor Sou Phirin for the deal which saw 26 government departments and their staff of more than 1,000 moved to a remote area some 16 km outside Siem Reap City. The remoteness of the site had caused logistical problems for Siem Reap’s administration and angered civil servants whose travel time to and from work, as well as the extra cost of petrol, had bitten into their modest government salaries. Siem Reap chief of police Mok Sam Oun on Thursday accused Mr. Phirin of hatching the now-failed move for personal profit. Mr. Sam Oun and hundreds of his colleagues in the Siem Reap administration are now packing up their offices and moving back to the city following a return order issued by Prime Minister Hun Sen on August 9. The financial losses from the aborted move are not yet known. However, Lun Sothy, director of J&R Import, Export and Construction Company, on Friday defended Mr. Phirin’s decision to swap valuable government land and buildings in Siem Reap City for the remotely located site, saying that the order came from the central government. “The governor is not the one who made the decision. It is higher,” Mr. Sothy said by telephone. … Siem Reap’s provincial government was moved from the city center to a 42-hectare site in rural Ampil commune in March 2010 after J&R was awarded a contract to build some 60 new office buildings there. The swap deal allowed J&R to take control of a number of centrally located provincial government buildings in prime locations in Siem Reap, including those along the city’s sought-after riverfront. J&R’s Mr. Sothy said on Friday that his company had already sold all the government land and offices for cash, which he then used to construct the buildings in Ampil. … Mr. Hun Sen—in the August 9 letter—ordered Siem Reap’s municipal and provincial officials to move back into the city center and switch buildings with the Apsara Authority, which manages the Angkor Archaeological Park. In turn, more than 500 Apsara Authority officials have been ordered to vacate their Siem Reap premises and move to the Ampil site now being abandoned by provincial and municipal officials. Faced with the impending move, employees at the Apsara Authority have already demanded compensation for having to move to the remote site. …
Dene-Hern Chen and Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/contractor-says-senior-official-approved-siem-reap-land-swap-41909/
