pailin – A few weeks ago, Sreng Saroeun paid $45 for the right to mine for gems on 6 square meters of land here.
He and his daughter extracted 80 bags of dirt, sifting through 10 of them before finding a sapphire that he was able to sell for $50.
Sreng Saroeun was a happy man, but he was the only one of 10 miners interviewed who did so well. None of the others found a thing.
Like Sreng Saroeun, many people try to make a living here by searching for gems. It was once a booming business, but the supply is being depleted every day.
Yet the poor of Pailin have little choice but to continue to dig through dirt or carry logs—anything to boost their incomes—as investors and officials debate Pailin’s economic future.
In 1996, thousands in this former Khmer Rouge stronghold elected to abandon the revolution and join the government.
Although the mass defection brought peace to Pailin, the area is still struggling to develop after emerging from its isolation.
After the defection, Pailin became an autonomous region, making its own decisions on investment and keeping tax revenues for its own development. Keo Horn, third deputy governor of Pailin, said the system has worked well and tax revenues are being used for development.
But some Pailin traders disagree, saying business has plummeted.
Ket Buntheng, 44, a rice seller in Pailin market, said “revenues from taxes [go] not for development but for salaries of staff.’’
He said the high taxes are driving people away from Pailin.
Ar Song Sreng, a supervisor at Hang Meas Hotel in Pailin, said people are certainly leaving. He says the population, which had doubled by 1998 to about 40,000, has dropped back down to around 20,000, hurting both business and tax revenue.
Keo Horn said that he understands people don’t like paying taxes, “especially former guerrillas who have never been taxed. But it is government policy and needs to be abided by.”
He said the government knows people are having a hard time making a living while they wait for development to proceed. Many companies have come to examine the area, but none have invested yet due to the poor condition of the road between Battambang and Pailin. A USAid project to rebuild National Route 10 was canceled in 1997 after the factional fighting.
If the road was repaired, said First Deputy Governor Ieng Vuth, the cost and the time needed for transportation would be reduced, giving farmers more markets for their products, increasing tourism and encouraging trade between Thailand and Cambodia. As it is now, the poor condition of roads around Pailin make travel during the rainy season difficult, and sometimes near impossible.
Part of National Road 10, from the Thai border to O’Sursdey, Pailin plans to repair on its own using money from contracts with three casinos operating in Pailin.
There has been some progress in Pailin, Ieng Vuth said. Since the fighting in 1997, a new city hall, a park, two main roads in town and a hospital have been built. There is also a new factory for grinding stones into gravel and a new municipal police headquarters. This year alone, he said, Pailin has built seven schools.
Pailin is also negotiating to buy electricity from Thailand, which would drop the price from 1,500 riel per kilowatt hour to 700 riel.
Keo Horn said some investment possibilities under consideration include using bamboo to manufacture chopsticks, toothpicks and mats.
Meanwhile, the people ar e just scraping by. Most villagers grow rice, but that keeps them busy only four to five months a year.
Roeung Seung, 28, is having worse-than-usual luck this year. Both his rice and corn crop failed due to lack of rain, so he has been carrying logs down the mountain. A cubic meter, which takes him three days to transport, pays $7.50.
Ar Song Sreng, 45, said poor people here have few options. All the land in Pailin has been divided up by authorities, so that newcomers must rent land to live on or to mine.
One gem trader said almost all of the land in Pailin town has already been stripped by bulldozers, and that there is little left to be gleaned.
But still they try, a bag of dirt at a time.
