Cambodia/Thailand: Border dispute displaces up to 30,000

Published on Feb 9, 2011 – 7:41:56 AM
By: IRIN News

Photo: Gary Arndt/Flickr The Preah Vihear Temple

BANGKOK, 9 February 2011 (IRIN) – NGOs working along the Thai-Cambodian border are monitoring clashes between the two countries near a disputed temple and are extremely concerned about the reported displacement of up to 30,000 people.

“We have evacuated our staff and are preparing to assist those who have fled the area,” Agneta Dau Valler, country representative of Church World Service Cambodia, which has field staff living in villages in Choam Khsant District, where the disputed Preah Vihear temple is located, told IRIN.

An estimated 15,000 people on the Thai side of the border have “fled to makeshift shelters and other villages away from the range of fire,” said Amnat Barlee, director of the Thai Red Cross’s Relief and Community Health Bureau, while Cambodian Red Cross officials estimate the displacement of a similar number on their side of the border.

Chinese firms offer help to Cambodian stampede victims [donating $120,000]

• Source: Global Times
• November 26 2010

Cambodians Thursday mourn the victims of Monday's deadly stampede on the Diamond Gate bridge in Phnom Penh. Photo: AFP

Chinese enterprises in Cambodia have donated $120,000 to the victims of a major stampede Monday night in Phnom Penh, the Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

“China and Cambodia enjoy a long-lasting friendship. We feel the same sorrow as the Cambodians do … and we will do what we can to help them overcome the difficulties,” Xinhua quoted Sun Yanqian, secretary-general of the Chinese Business Association in Cam-bodia, as saying in a special council meeting.

Parking charges levied in city

phnompenhpost

FRIDAY, 28 MAY 2010 15:04

By: CHHAY CHANNYDA

Photo by: Sovan Philong A security guard helps guide a motorist into a parking space on Charles de Gaulle Boulevard on Thursday.

CITY Hall on Thursday began charging motorists up to 20,000 riels (US$4.80) to park on the kerb along a small section of Charles de Gaulle Boulevard in Prampi Makara district, kicking off a one-week experiment that, if successful, could be expanded throughout the city in an attempt to reclaim pavement for pedestrians, officials said.

Customers visiting shops along the 120-metre stretch, located between Streets 107 and 109, will be allowed to park cars and motorbikes along the roadside for free for up to one hour, said deputy municipal traffic police chief El Narin, who led Thursday’s operation.

Those driving motorbikes will be charged 500 riels if they park for between one and two hours, 2,000 riels if they park for between two and four hours, and 10,000 riels if they park for longer than four hours.

Steeper charges await car-drivers, who will be forced to pay 20,000 riels if they park for between one and two hours. Any cars left along the road for longer than two hours will be towed, El Narin said.

A notice dated May 25 says the point of the exercise, which runs through June 2, is to reduce the number of vehicles along Charles de Gaulle and discourage “anarchic parking”. Fees are being collected by Sky Security Service.

Masato Koto, an urban planning consultant for the city who dreamed up the scheme, said his long-term vision was to restrict roadside parking along major thoroughfares to designated areas while imposing charges to drive down demand. By doing so, he said, officials could make Phnom Penh more pedestrian-friendly.

“In other countries, sidewalks are only for pedestrians,” he said. “But Cambodia is different. Here sidewalks are for parking cars, so we have to change this characteristic.”

El Narin emphasised that it is just an experiment, and that some components of the system would likely be altered before officials move to expand
it or make it permanent.

The charge of 20,000 riels for car-drivers, he said, was “too high”, a view that was echoed by a handful of motorists and shop owners interviewed Thursday.

Masato acknowledged that the charges had drawn criticism, but said they needed to be high in order to effectively deter parking.
“If the cost is high, then people will no longer want to park here. That’s the point,” he said.

“The number of cars is increasing every day, but the land in the city is limited, so we have to control the demand for parking.”

Transparency increases, but there is still a long way to go

PhnomphenPost

May 14,2010 at 8:14 pm

Recent scandals over oil, gas and mining payments suggest a degree of transparency by a government firmly under suspicion

Photo by: Pha Lina Sok An signs an exploration agreement with Japan’s JOGMEC on May 4 in Phnom Penh. Stakeholders in Cambodia have different views as to whether the EITI is the right model."

DURING an otherwise routine presentation on the Cambodian economy on March 17, Ministry of Economy and Finance Director General Hang Chuon Naron chose the very last slide to offer a rare, detailed glimpse of Cambodia’s expanding oil and gas revenues.

The decision has since proven to be both a milestone in Cambodian transparency, and a millstone around the government’s neck.

On one hand, Hang Chuon Naron’s disclosure that the government received US$800,000 in December and $26 million in January for energy “signature bonuses” and a “social fund” represented a new level of state transparency for extractive industry payments in the Kingdom.

Subsequently, however, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government has faced increasingly difficult questions on where the money came from, how it is being spent and to what degree payments derived from the extractives industry will be opened up for public scrutiny.

The missing $500,000 reportedly paid to the government by the world’s largest iron ore producer BHP Billiton – now the subject of a US securities and exchange commission enquiry – looks to be just the start of a period in which the government has increasingly been asked the question: Where has all this money gone?

For the first time, the Cambodian government has published state revenues publicly that detail payments foreign energy and mining companies have made to operate in the Kingdom. A TOFE (state financial operations notice) partly issued on the Finance Ministry website and fully presented at last month’s Oxfam America extractive industries conference in the capital showed the state received some 9.323 billion riels, or $2.25 million, from the sector in 2009. Of this total, 6.003 billion riels ($1.45 million) came from mining companies, with the remaining $800,000 derived from the oil and gas sector, according to official government figures.

But with Australian mining companies OZ Minerals and Southern Gold looking at imminent gold production in Cambodia, and US energy firm Chevron under pressure from the government to begin oil production as soon as 2012, the political opposition, civil society and the UN – among others – are pushing the government to go further on what they say is still limited disclosure.

“I think [this is] the first step, the first step that the government has [made] … to disclose this information to the public,” said Mam Sambath, chairman and executive director of the NGO Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency (CRRT).