After 17 years of exploration, in March 2010, the government believes this could be the biggest find so far in Cambodia, yielding more than 600,000 ounces of gold. But even in sparsely populated Mondulkiri, people are in the way.
On June 10, the same year, authorities visited the villagers in the area as the third time and ordered them to leave their homes; otherwise they would burn down to the ground without compensation because the people were accused of having lived on the company’s location.
The report by Zoe Daniel with South East Asia on Saturday, June 19, 2010, Mr. District Councilor Len Vann said that there were 95 families that needed to be relocated; only five people were Mondulkiri people with proper documents. The rest had migrated from other provinces. If the villagers were not leaving, they would have to use legal procedure to move them.
According to Mr. Sam Sarin, Adhoc provincial coordinator in Mondulkiri, paying the visit in the above area were Keo Seima District Governor Sin Vanvuth, expert official from the Department and some joint armed forces. He said that before the visit, there were around 500 families temporarily stayed there. However when the authority banned the small-scale operations for the last several months, they subsequently left. At the moment there are only 65 families left, who have their own permanent houses there.
Related to the issue, he added, those people did not refuse at all, but they had 2 requests for the authority to help them. One, they requested to find out new settlement for them and two, to help spending on house dismantle.
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