Land allocation for the poor comes closer
Sitting on the floor of her tiny thatched cottage, rocking her sleeping 18-month-old child in a hammock, Rin Neang, 23, and eight months pregnant with another child, is full of hope that her family will soon own its own piece of land.
“I heard that they [the government] will give my family a piece of land for residential and agricultural land,” she said. Then after a breath she continued: “I am still waiting for it and I don’t know when it is going to come. I hope I can have it soon because I don’t have any other land to grow rice on.”
Landless former soldier Touch Sokhon, 52, has submitted a request for residential and agricultural land from a social land concession program. She hopes the land will provide a better life for her, her husband, also a former soldier, and their six children.
“Since we demobilized we haven’t had land to farm and give us a living,” she said. She pointed to her wooden house, indicating its poor condition, and said, “Here is our house, but it’s built on my brother’s land.”
Sokhon’s family is one of the poorest in the village and she and her husband make their living by selling their labor to other villagers to plant and harvest rice, or weeding cassava patches. None of her children has completed primary school.
“Even though we are poor and have no tools or stock for the new land, I will try my best to improve my family’s situation. You know, if we are lazy our life will not change,” she said with a smile of hope.
Oung Houn, a Kravien Commune resident of Kampong Cham, feels so happy since she was invited by the village chief to submit her request for a piece of land. “I was so happy when I heard that. I borrowed 10,000 riel ($2.50) from my neighbor for my husband to take a pas port photo to include with the application.”
Oung Houn has eight children. None of them goes to school. Her husband suffers from chronic shrapnel wounds from his days as a soldier in Cambodia’s years of war.
Neang, Sokhon, and Houn are all among the poorest landless families in Kratie and Kampong Cham provinces. They have submitted their applications for land designated for distribution for residential and agricultural purposes under the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development Project (LASED) approved by the World Bank Board on May 20 and signed over in an agreement with the government on June 13, 2008.
(source: The World Bank’s newsletter: Volume 6, No.6-7, June-July 2008)