“Now I feel confident for my future and for my children. No one can come to grab my land. This is my real property.”
--66-year old Dith Sary upon receiving her land title certificate Prey Speu Village, outskirts of Phnom Penh, August 4, 2007. “I was shivering so much with excitement when the announcer called me to come up and get a land title certificate that my skin was covered in goose pimples,” says a 66-year-old Dith Sary, as she holds her valuable certificate, while standing in the front row to thank the delegation. “Now I feel confident for my future and for my children. No one can come to grab my land. This is my real property.” With her new certificate she plans to use it effectively: it will be the hard evidence that will give her to access to capital for running a business or an emergency. And she is confident that when she dies the certificate will secure the land for her children. Pan Men, 56, another farmer who received a land certificate, feels the same way that Dith Sary does and says, “From now on our land is safe, no dispute on the boundary.”  |  | | Dith Sary, left, and Pan Men, right, among a group of landowners proudly displaying the documents that guarantee their titles. |
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Because of population growth in his village and the great increase in the price of land, Men feels that land is no longer safe if there is no legal document to protect it. “I am so happy because now no one can claim my land,” he says with a hopeful smile. Another participant, retired civil servant Mom Choy, 59, holding documents to check against a list on a white board in Prey Speu pagoda where the land title ceremony was held, says, “I have come here to check my name to make sure it is correct and if there is any mistake we can inform the land title authority and correct it.”
Sary, Men and Choy were among 500 villagers who received land titles at Prey Speu pagoda, Khan Dangkao, located outskirt of Phnom Penh, where the World Bank President Robert Zoellick assisted in handing out new land titles to the Prey Speu villagers. |  | | Mr. Zoellick assisted in handing out new land titles to the people of Prey Speu village, outside Phnom Penh. |
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“The land titling progress enables poorer Cambodians to own a stake in both their own future and that of their country. Yet too many poor people remain landless. Some of the powerful are seeking to dominate large tracts.” he said. “We want to work to accelerate this titling of land and to ensure that efforts are being made to reach the poorest and those most likely to be dispossessed of their lands, such as ethnic minorities. Also that Cambodia still faces a huge task of reclaiming productive land and clearing the millions of mines laid during the decades of conflict – mines which still kill and maim today.” Mr Zoellick said that having property rights would also enable people to invest in their farms, small businesses, and houses, to improve their financial security and their lives. “Land titling is at the heart of a strategy to overcome poverty and spread the benefits of a growing economy,” he said. With support from the World Bank-financed Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP), the Government, particularly the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction, is issuing more than 20,000 titles a month, mostly in rural areas, with 80 percent of the titles registered jointly by wife and husband or by female-headed households. The LMAP project is designed to improve land tenure security and promote the development of efficient land markets.
For more information about the World Bank program in Cambodia, visit http://www.worldbank.org/kh |
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