Fires in Bassac   Community   25  November 2001

What happened after this fire and another a day later ......  

No temporary shelter for the victims of the emergency has been allowed up 3 or 4 days after the fire and until very recently no distribution of food and water was allowed unless the people went to the relocation sites first.  The relocation sites are miles from the city, in the middle of an unprepared rice fields in Anlong Gong in Dangkor District with no water arrangements in place, no shelter save two poles and a plastic sheet, no sanitation arrangements of any kind, not to mention safe water supply or electricity. Calling the relocation voluntary is misleading indeed.

People do not know the origins of the fires.  Aid agencies did try for 5 days for Bassac (1st fire) and 4 days for Chbar Ampoe (second fire ) to allow humanitarian aid to be distributed to the people whether they went to the relocation sites or not.  Leaving them on the roadside in such  deprived circumstances has taken its toll on the people. 

Though at first, most had not wanted to go to the remote relocation sites offered by the Municipality.  By the time the permission to distribute food in Bassac was given by the Governor, the affected communities had been so broken down and disunited that they were easily convinced into being trucked out to the relocation sites on Tuesday. NGOs and others in Phnom Penh were disturbed that families with elderly persons, children and pregnant women were trucked out on Tuesday, even late into the night, to be dumped.  The renters from Bassac were the last to be trucked like cattle and dumped in the middle of the night into a field that was being used to graze cattle.  The reason for the overnight relocation we were told by officials was that they had to be trucked out in time for the distribution of "presents" from the Cambodian Red Cross.  When people went out to the site again the following morning there had been no such distribution as yet though people were told that they would receive things like rice and mosquito nets later that afternoon.  The 1400 or so house owners from Bassac had been trucked to another equally unprepared site at Anlong Knga in Russey Keo district over the last 6 days where they had been allocated plots.   

Only a group of about 300 families from the other fire destroyed community in Chbar Ampoe have gone and protested at the PM's house.  Some 600 others have signed up to go to the Anlong Knga site.  The conditions on both of these relocation sites are really appalling in terms of land preparation, infrastructure and essential services.  The Municipality of Phnom Penh will now request aid agencies to repeat an unproductive process with similar relocations sites recently ---  that they rush out and provide toilets and other infrastructure to over 2,200 households who are absolutely destitute. It is going to be a repeat of the Chungruk exercise following the fire in May this year.  After building roads, drainage and toilets,   in 4 months time most of the poor people  will have to leave and come back to earn a living in Phnom Penh.  Wealthier operators will come and buy the plots for a song and make windfall profits in a few years time when the roads to these remote city locations make these plots suitable for higher income groups (especially if they buy a couple of plots).  This is already starting to happen in Chungruk (a similar relocation site) .  The priority it seems is with simply clearing the much coveted land on the riverside (where the fires took place) and not with the effectiveness of the relocation process as a poverty alleviation measure.  Some aid agencies feel that  it could be said they are being used to camouflage the brutal relocation exercise and of enriching those entrepreneurs who work for it at various levels.

 Next:     The New Relocation Site       Next:  The Renters who were left at Bassac