Representatives of the 301 families granted a social land concession in Kratie province to resolve a long-running land dispute said Sunday that they filed a report with authorities on Saturday detailing the new families that have since gathered with them in the hope of also securing land.
Authorities granted the families a 750-hectare concession earlier this month after some of the 301 families spent almost two weeks in Phnom Penh protesting being forced off land in Snuol district by the Binh Phuoc 2 company, but the news spread quickly and opportunists soon arrived.
“We conducted a registration and found 792 families living under shelters on the 750 hectares of land and a nearby dirty road,” said Nguon Vibol, one of the seven Khyoem commune representatives whose houses were razed to make way for the company’s rubber plantation.
The figure of 792 is even higher than it was last week, when 449 extra families were said to have joined the original 301 in registering for the SLC.
Mr. Vibol said the report requests that authorities solve the issues surrounding the 301 first. But he said it also asks authorities to assist the 491 new families later, as they are also homeless.
Kratie provincial governor Sar Chamrong said his authorities were still considering how to deal with the influx of new families.
“We have a policy to give social land concessions to the poor families but we are going to search for the truth regarding the increase in families,” Mr. Chamrong said.
Heng Phearak, investigator for rights group Adhoc, said the 301 families are now living under shelters on the SLC while the newcomers have set up makeshift plots on the side of a road nearby.
Mr. Phearak added that many of the newly-arrived families came from disputed land involving another Vietnamese rubber firm called Deuk Yong, and came from the same commune as the original 301 families.
“Authorities are now facing difficulties on how to find a solution for all these families because the land is too small for all the families that registered,” Mr. Phearak said.
