Customs officials plan to auction off 132 containers of clothes, tobacco and spare auto parts abandoned in warehouses at the Sihanoukville port.
Pen Siman, director of the customs department, said it is time for the port authority to “clean up the warehouse.”
All of the containers were abandoned between 1993 and the end of 1998. Port officials tried three times to contact the renters of each container, asking them to claim their goods. Some of the owners could not be found while others refused to claim their merchandise, said Var Sonath, the port’s deputy director.
“Those containers have been in the warehouse for quite a long time without [the owners] paying rent,” Var Sonath said.
A commission formed by the Council of Ministers—with members from the ministries of Public Works, Commerce and Finance—is now making an inventory of the quantity and quality of the goods and deciding whether they are worth selling. The commission has gone through less than half the containers. A date has not been set for the auction.
Customs officials could not estimate how much money might be made from the auction. Part of the proceeds will go to the port authority; the rest will go to the government’s general fund.
