A one-week deadline issued to land speculators to relinquish claims to Kob Srov lake in Phnom Penh expired on Thursday, though not one of the ownership claimants complied with a municipal order to remove their illegal land demarcation posts, officials said.
Russei Keo district Governor Khlaing Huot said on Thursday that authorities will today begin removing the concrete posts, which were planted deep into the lake, as the speculators had failed to heed the municipal order and remove the posts themselves.
“No one showed up,” Khlaing Huot said. “I will go and see myself and remove them all.”
Around 500 hectares of Kob Srov lake are located in Russei Keo district, and last week plots inside the lake were openly being advertised for sale, with 16 mobile phone numbers spray-painted on the dike wall.
Krouch Phan, governor of Dangkao district, where more than 600 hectares of the lake are located, said that he has formed a committee to investigate the sale of the lake.
Krouch Phan said last week that most of the lake under his jurisdiction has been sold to rich and powerful officials.
Suong Samneang, 37, one lake property speculator, said on Thursday that he has purchased 80 hectares of the public lake from local villagers starting in 2003, and claimed he spent $2 million in the process. He also claimed that he has documents proving his ownership of the lake issued by the municipality’s land department.
Suong Samneang said that he knew nothing of the deadline to remove his demarcation posts.
“I don’t know anything yet. Let’s first wait and see what the other land owners do,” he said.
Sa’em Chakriya, owner of at least four large plots of submerged lake, said she had at least 20 ownership posts sunk into the lake since 1999 and that it wouldn’t be an easy job to remove them.
She also maintained that she knew nothing of the deadline, and though her mobile phone number was painted on the dike wall, she claimed that she had not been contacted by any authorities.
“I don’t know at all about this deadline,” she said. “I don’t worry at all. Others will protest, and I will follow them.”
