Lack of Aid Brings Victims Back to Capital

More than 70 villagers from Kandal province who left the capital earlier this month after they were assured they would get flood aid have returned to Phnom Penh, complaining local officials didn’t give them the food and money they were promised.

However, district authorities say the villagers had already been given flood relief packages and weren’t entitled to the extra gifts.

The villagers say they were among the estimated 3,000 people who marched with opposition leader Sam Rainsy Oct 20 to protest alleged corrupt practices in the distribution of flood aid.

Chhin Rong, 42, said she came to Phnom Penh from Domrey Chhlong village in Sa’ang district two weeks ago and camped outside the National Assembly to ask for flood relief.

She and hundreds of others from Sa’ang left the capital after officials from the Royal Palace gave them vouchers promising them gifts of food and money once they returned home, she said Monday.

When the gifts arrived, district officials rejected some people’s vouchers and gave the relief to their families and supporters, villagers claim.

But Lon Sophat, deputy police chief of Sa’ang district, said the villagers had already been given relief packages by the World Food Program, so they didn’t deserve the extra gifts.

Fair aid distribution “is a problem everywhere,”Lon Sophat said. “[But] these people are always complaining.”

Senator Ou Bun Long of the Sam Rainsy Party conceded it’s often hard to make accurate head counts and give help to the people who genuinely need it.

Villagers are often absent visiting family or cutting wood, “so you cannot blame” local authorities for sometimes making mistakes, he said.

But, he added, the government should make more of an effort to investigate the complaints of the thousands of villagers who have come to Phnom Penh protesting unfair aid distribution in the last few weeks.

Recently Prime Minister Hun Sen and aid agencies urged flood-afflicted farmers to return to their villages and wait for food to be brought to them.

Last week more than 1,000 people returned to their villages after municipal authorities of­fered them food and transport home.

The prime minister hinted the villagers had been encouraged to come to Phnom Penh by Sam Rainsy as a publicity stunt geared at discrediting the government’s flood-relief efforts.

The prime minister said that the money villagers spent to travel to the city would be better spent on food for themselves.

But Ou Bun Long countered Monday that villagers have no choice but to bring their protests to the capital. “They want to spend their money [on transport] because they really need food,” he said.

Sam Rainsy sent a letter to King Norodom Sihanouk asking for more help for the villagers, Ou Bun Long said.

In the meantime the opposition party will give the villagers food and a place to stay until they can return home.

 

 

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