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Keynote Address at the Dissemination of
Statement on Social Land Concession Policy for Veterans and Families
Phnom Penh, December 23, 2009
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today, it is my pleasure to be here in the
dissemination ceremony of statement on social land concession policy for
veterans and families with Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen who are the
management of ministries/institutions, municipality, provinces and civil
servants and armed forces. This event does not only allow us to exchange
dialogue and instructions to realize some important jobs, but it also helps us
to sustain the policy implementation. The policy to be launched and disseminated
at the moment must be jointly and consistently implemented by all related
ministries, institutions, and other stakeholders in order to bring about good
outcomes and prosperity for the whole society.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to
extend my appreciation to the inter-ministerial commission led by H.E. Deputy
Prime Minister Keat Chhon, Minister of Economy and Finance and Chairman
of Committee on Economic and Financial Policy and its members for composing this
statement as instructed by me in the plenary cabinet meeting on September 4,
2009. Along with this, I highly value contribution from all levels of the civil
servants and armed forces in the concerted effort to undertake various
governments’ initiatives and measures to provide social land concession to armed
forces and their families by all kinds of means and methods, which have realized
outcomes as follows:
- The
allocation of social land concession within the framework of military
demobilization;
- The
allocation of social land concession for military development;
- The
allocation of many hectares of social land concession in Veal Thom Village,
Treng Troyeung Commune, Phnom Sruoch District, Kampong Speu Province to disable
soldiers and families of armed forces for housing construction and farming;
- The
Royal Government, by the Sub-decree No. 33 ANK.PK dated April, 11, 2007 took
away 2,507 hectares of forest land, of which 1,317 hectares were allocated to
Siem Reap Province for the purpose of social land concession and 1,190 hectares
were offered to the Ministry of Defense for further distribution to the families
of soldiers.
- My
wife and I are organizing villages for families of serving, disabled and dead
soldiers in some regions, including the provision of 173 hectares of social land
concession to 100 families of disabled soldiers in Taken Koh Sla, Kampot Provice;
and additional 16,400 hectares to 1912 families in Chorm Ksan District, Preah
Vihear Province.
What we are currently doing cannot fulfill
our needs. In this spirit, we must continue to put more effort and do our utmost
to implement the job to achieve our target.
In particular, I would like to highlight
today major goals and principles as well as measures and mechanism to successfully realize this policy
implementation as follows:
First: Social land
concession policy for veterans do not only contribute to sustainability of
social safety net and serve the purpose of military reform as stipulated in “Rectangular Strategy Phase II” , it also brings about vast benefits
to support the following socio-economic goals:
1. Expressing gratitude to the
veterans and their families for the enormous sacrifice through the strengthening
of social safety net for them;
2. Restructuring labor contribution
by transforming inactive human resources into an active production force to
provide opportunity to veterans and their families to own lands and contribute
to national development.
3. This policy does not only reduce
military and national defense spending, but it also reflects the real substance
of spending on social safety net system.
4. Updating our armed forces by
recruiting new resources if needed
Second. In order to achieve
socio-economic goals above, the government is adhering to some key principles as
follows:
1. Equity Principle. The government has set priorities in their
policies by targeting
those who deserve social land concession as well as ordering of provision of
this social land concession with transparency, because the government cannot
provide social land concession based on equality principle to all veteran
families, because of limited state financial resource, implementation of
national policy on land management based on efficiency principle, variation in
livelihood of veterans and their families, it means these coexist the rich who
does not need land and the poor who need land. Furthermore, need of each family
are not the same.
2. Efficiency Principle in Land Management.
Land, key
fundamental natural
resource which can be utilized for socio-economic development and is limited
resources which cannot be expanded easily, demands for efficient and rational
management in order to sustainably answer the needs of the nation and people of
next generations to come. In this sense, in provision of social land concession
to veterans and family, the government will be associated with need for
strengthening efficiency and productivity in systematic management of state land
resource, especially in policy dimension related to identification and
management of state reserved land, identification and reclassification of
forest-covered land and deforested land which can be utilized as social land
concession, transforming inactive economic land concession into social land
concession and strengthening linkage between economic land concession and social
land concession as envisaged in Rectangular Strategy of the
government.
3. Economic efficiency in utilization of social land
concession.
One of main objectives of provision of social land concession to veterans and
family is to establish social safety net for the really
poor veteran families so that they can build their houses, make a living with
family-base farming in order to contribute to upgrade their living standards and
to improve agricultural productivity and intensification for economic
development and poverty reduction. Therefore, to ensure the economic efficiency
of use of social land concession, the government does not allow those who
possess social land concession retain it for selling, leasing, exchanging for
labor, fencing it without usage.
4. Principle of integration of
veteran in to society: One of the main objectives within frameworks of
national armed force reform is to ensure the integration of retired,
incompetent, disabled and dead armed force in to society so that they can live
as civilian in harmony with their families and communities. To achieve the goal,
the government will carry out a comprehensively systematic measure by developing
plans for residence construction sites and business activities at concessional
sites with the support of socio-economic physical infrastructures such as
transport networks, irrigation system, potable water, schools, health centers,
pagodas, assistance for house construction and early needed residing, provision
of social service and other training to help their living for medium and long
term. In the sense, the land area of the concession programs should be
appropriately large. For instance, each program should prepare for 200 to 300
families with proper planning of land use, socio-economic physical
infrastructure; business, agriculture and production sites, as farming so on.
Third: For policy and legal
framework, the government issues some important documents as stated in the
statement. In this regard, I would like to add on the work of the social land
concession that we need to pay attention on the package issues of state-owned
land management from land identification, land classification and planning for
land use in comply with basic rule of sub-decree, particularly sub-decree on
state-owned land management and sub-decree on the planning process of commune/sangkat
land use. These two sub-decrees emphasize clearly the framework of the use and
management of the state-owned land, the limitation of the rights and obligation
of the administration and institution of the state in the arrangement and
management of state-owned land.
Fourth: In addition to policies and principles mentioned, we need to review
further measures and mechanism to be implemented for
this social land concession. In a spirit of transforming the statement on
social land concession policy for the veterans and families into
concrete actions, the government has laid out measures and mechanism as follows:
1. The Ministry of National Defense
and Ministry of Interior must prepare to transfer the retired and disabled armed
forces with disability and the dead families to be under the management of the
Ministry of Social Works, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation. In this regard,
the Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Social
Works, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation must prepare a data system, which has
clear list in each institution, and create mechanism to constantly verify and
update by closely cooperating with the Ministry of Economy and Finance in order
to expand management of transferring of the retired and disabled armed forces
with disability and the dead families. The Ministry of Economy and Finance must
prepare the budget planning for the Ministry of National Defense for the gradual
transfer of militant type- II from the Ministry of National Defense to be under
the management of the Ministry of Social Works, Veterans and Youth
Rehabilitation.
2. Based on the transfer plan,
those who have not been transferred from the armed forces will continue
receiving equal attention as the other armed forces too.
3. Those, who will be transferred
from the armed forces based on this plan, will become the signal to identify the
allocation of the prioritized social land concession first; and for those, who
have been already transferred, will be in the second round of priority for the
identification signal for the provision of this social land concession.
4. Create an inter-ministry
committee to be a mechanism to identify the retired and disabled armed forces
with disability and the dead families, who will be receiving the social land
concession with the composition as set in the policy statement. This committee
is obligated to set the prioritized criteria to prepare the list and update the
armed forces and families, who are truly poor, homeless and landless for
agriculture; and who are willing to live in the social concession land to be
allocated by the state.
5. After the identification of the
armed forces and families for the allocation of the social land concession, this
committee must send those lists to the National Committee for Social Land
Concession in order to take further action based on the priority and its network
at the municipal, provincial, district and communal level.
6. The mechanism for
implementation, which includes the defining of location until the division of
social concession land and the observation after the allocation of social
concession land, must conform to the mechanism of social land concession of the
Royal Government stated in the Sub-decree 19 dated 19 March 2003. For this
mechanism, the Minister of Land management, Urban Planning and Construction is
the Chairman of the National Committee for Social land Concession and
organizational chart starts from the local, communal levels and comprehensive
legal framework. Therefore, this committee is required to ensure to achieve the
target and significant principles in allocating the social land concession to
the ex-soldiers and families as illustrated above. Moreover, the implementation
of the work on social land concession in a greater number of provinces, which is
being in process with excellent results under the management competency of this
mechanism, will also contribute to ensure institutional consistency and
consistency in policy implementation of the government.
7. In order to achieve the
objective to ensure institutional and policy implementation consistency of the
government to implement the policy on social land concession to the veterans and
families, the committee for land consumption and division of the municipality,
provinces and communes are necessary to be jointly responsible even this program
has been initiated at the national level. In fact, we have three significant
tasks related to the work of social land concession, which include the
identification of the retired and disabled armed forces with disability and the
dead families, to be done by the inter-ministry committee at the national level
and led by the Ministry of Social Works, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, the
seeking of land to support the program and development work and plan, which
necessarily requires information from the sub-national level, and the
secretariat of the committee for social land concession at the national level
and all ministries/institutions must get together and rationalize to response to
the request to serve the national program.
As for the location to support the
program, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction and
the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries have primarily collected a
number of data through the line departments of the two ministries. Thus, after
the meeting today, the two ministries must establish a working group to go and
discuss with the committee of state-owned management at the municipal and
provincial levels in order to set an select appropriate locations according to
the scale of priorities to be prepared before sending information about number
of armed forces to be retired, and those who will be allocated the land in each
province.
Based on the location planned, the
municipal and provincial governors, who are the chairman of the technical
cooperation committee of the municipal and provincial councils, must study and
be prepared to solve the issue of resettlement and qualification to support the
family business for a living of our people. The study must be done in the
spirit of integration plan either physical infrastructure or pubic services by
coordinating the public and private investment programs.
As for land, which has been studied so
far, stated in the policy statement include: land collected base on court
verdict, economic concession land, confiscated by the disrespect of contracts,
lands which were illegal controlled, eroded land which could be partially used
at the appropriate areas, lands which have been identified based on the
government’s circular № 06 dated on 8th November 2007, which
according to the report made by the Ministry of Land Management Urban Planning
and Construction, there have been 34,830 hectars in 12 provinces.
In the context of development goal of the
government and the practical possibility, especially the location of the land to
serve the program, meaning after the building of general plan related to the
various municipalities and provinces, the National Committee for Social Land
Concession must oversee and seek advice from the Royal Government in main
activities distribution to be directly led by the national level by
collaborating with sub-national level and the program which is fully responsible
by the sub-national level under the technical support from the sub-national
level.
Every points put forward in this meeting
is to clarify the goals, principles, measures and mechanisms to implement the social land concession policy for the
armed forces and families in order to achieve important purpose of armed force
reform, establishing social safety net for the citizens and to promote
development for poverty reduction of the people. After the announcement meeting
today, all ministries/institutions and all related committees must be in hurry
to design work plans related to the land identification to be used for the
programs, identification to those who are worth receiving social land concession
according to the level of priorities and think of the qualification to be
prepared for the living of our people at the initial stage. All works must be
well planned in 2010 in order to be used as a foundation for budget preparation.
We hope that our national society will tremendously receive fruitful results
with efficiency and success according to the set objectives.
In fact, this social land concession could
also be used in distributing to the victims of natural disaster, families of new
resettlement and community development and these works will contribute to the
solution of various social issues, enhancement of the living condition and
poverty alleviation of the people. In this sense, we will continue putting
greater efforts to implement this social land concession task to be more
comprehensive in the future according to the actual possibility and ability. In
this regard, the Royal Government strongly believes that all people will surely
contribute with related ministries/institutions of the Royal Government in order
to implement this policy more effectively.
At the end, with the ‘Dissemination
of Statement on Social Land Concession Policy for Veterans and Families, I would like to wish Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen the four Gems of
Buddhist blessing.
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