Illegal Construction Rampant in Angkor Heritage Site
In the months leading up to Cambodia’s national election on July 28, authorities in the Angkor Archaeological Park allowed dozens of land owners to build new houses and develop plots of land inside highly protected areas of the world heritage site. Villagers interviewed last week said they were allowed to push ahead with building work on new homes on land in the region of the Angkor Wat temple, inside the Eastern Baray—an ancient artificial water catchment area—and on a newly constructed road that runs between Angkor Thom and the Western Baray. Several property owners said they interpreted inaction by the Apsara Authority, the government agency responsible for managing the Angkor park, as a green light to undertake the building work. “Apsara [Authority] allowed us to do it before the election,” said An Pheakdey, who has built a $3,000 wall around his plot of land, complete with a cast-iron gate, that stretches for about 25 meters and looks like the entrance to a luxury villa. “Since June, there are a lot of people doing construction. Before June, we were not even allowed to build so much as a chicken cage,” he said. ... According to laws governing the management of protected zones in the Angkor region, any building projects in Zone One—which includes both the Eastern and Western barays and dozens of classified temples—must be accompanied by an impact assessment as well as an archaeological study of the area. But in the run-up to the election, residents last week described a hasty rush by locals and outsiders to build new properties and add extensions to already existing structures in the protected area. ... Lim Uok, deputy chief of the Apsara Authority’s department in charge of development within the Angkor world heritage site, also said that some of the recent construction activity had been illegal, though he too declined to say why nobody had stopped the buildings from going ahead. ...
Phorn Bopha and Simon Marks
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/illegal-construction-rampant-in-angkor-heritage-site-42860/
