Phnom Penh, July 8, 2014: Eight NGOs representative together with two community representatives from Tumnup 2 and Tumnup 3 attended the Quarterly Land Working Group meeting, chaired by H.E Sor Sovan, Secretariat of state of MLMUPC at Ministry of Land, Urban Planning and Construction (MLMUPC).
Facilitated by Mr. Tek Vannara, Executive Director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, the meeting was proceed with the specific objectives such as to discuss on the supplementary registration of communities in Phnom Penh and indigenous people communal land titling registration, to follow up the progress of national housing policy, and lastly to strengthen the cooperation between CSOs MLMUPC in land conflict solution.
After a half day of a very fruitful meeting, MLMUPC group provided number of positive responses to the concern issues addressed by civil society organizations (CSOs) including:
- In exchange to the agreement of Tumnub2 and Tumnub3 communities proposed to register land as supplementary, MLMUPC has requested the communities the save a space of the land for the road rehabilitation.
- MLMUPC accepted to cooperate with NGOs in circulation to communities for the non-exclusion systematic land registration in Battambang
- MLMUPC requested NGO law experts to work together with ministry law experts (working group) on mechanism to convert private land to community land titling for the better outcomes
- Upon the coming August, MLMUPC will organize a training to concern stakeholders relates to the preliminary mapping for indigenous people
- For more acceptable reply about the land conflict caused by the land concession issue, MLMUPC has suggested the affected communities and concern NGOs to arrange the discussion with the Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries indeed
- The land policy “White Paper” which is now on the review process is expected to finish by end of this year and MLMUPC will share draft version to the relevant stakeholders around December this year and later on passed it to the Council of Minister for adoption
- Last but not least, National Housing Policy was adopted by Council of Minister on May 2014
The meeting was finished with the productive result and satisfaction of both parties.