Impact of Economic Land Concession on Local Livelihood in Banteay Meanchey

About 150 families, who asserted to own 150 hectares of land in Slorkram commune, Svay Chek district, Banteay Meanchey, expressed their concerns that they may have lost their land, which was grabbed by local authority to give to a local company, Chak Puok Co., Ltd.

The people said that they were awarded a 150-hectare social land concession in 1998, after they repatriated from camps along Thai border in 1993. Local authorities, however, said that the villagers violently grabbed and illegally cleared the state-owned land in the aforesaid site.

District Governor Khou Pov said that the land in question was actually confiscated from the villagers in 2006 during a crackdown of illegal clearing and that he was unaware of any social land concession granted to the families. He believed that the protesters were land buyers, not really local residents.

Chak Puok Co., Ltd belonged to a wealthy businesswoman Chak Puok, who has received a 30-year lease on approximately 5,000 hectares of land, including the above local villagers’ social land concession. Up to now about 1,000 hectares has been already cleared closed to the land in question in order to grow acacias.