Time is running out for a stalled $3.5 million tourism project in Kep Municipality, Kep’s governor said Wednesday.
The Cambodia-based Kok Hao Company Ltd has still not begun work on a rehabilitation project of Kep’s seaside area that was approved in June 1995.
“I will ask the Cambodian Development Council to cancel this agreement if this company does not come back. I will ask another investor to do it. I do not want to keep waiting,” Kep Governor An Heh said by telephone Wednesday.
The project is one of an unknown number of investment proposals approved by the CDC, a government body, that have been sitting idle since before factional fighting broke out in Phnom Penh in July 1997, effectively ending the former coalition government.
Kok Hao, the president of his self-named company, said Wednesday that the firm is preparing to begin work as soon as possible now that the new government has been formed.
“I think this time is the right time for us to do business and prepare agreements with the new government and local authorities to restart work,” Kok Hao said.
Development was delayed because of company concerns over the country’s security situation, he said.
No stalled project proposals have been canceled by the CDC, a CDC official said last week under condition of anonymity.
The Kok Hao project includes plans to rebuild the road from Kep to Bokor and to build a motel, hotels and several resorts along Kep’s seaside.
