Phnom Penh, January 26, 2015: NGO Forum on Cambodia (NGOF) together with Development and Partnership in Action (DPA), Life with Dignity (LWD), World Vision Cambodia (WVC), Housing Rights Task Force (HRTF), Community Managed Development Partners (CMDP), Urban Poor Women Development (UPWD) and Children’s Development Associations (CDA) attended quarterly meeting with Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction to discuss the following issues.
The meeting was focus on:
- To update on the guidelines/legal documents to support the Conversion from Private Land Titles (PLT) to Communal Land Titles (CLT)
- To discuss on how to increase CLT registration for Indigenous People (IP) communities; one proposal was to lower the tax fee to $39.9 per HA for CLT registration
- To update Circulation 03 on cutting out the land in urban areas
- To discuss Directive 01s’ impact on existing Community Forestry at Odor Mean Chey province
- To share research on “New Actions & Existing Policies: The Implementation and Impact of Order 01” to the MLMUPC
The meeting was led by H. E Sor Sovann, Secretariat of State MLMUPC and facilitated by Dr. Tek Vannara, of NGOF’s. The key results were:
- The completion of the draft guidelines by the legal department to support the conversion from PLT to CLT in Khmer. This draft is expected to be finalize within a month and then circulated to the CSOs/NGOs
- MLMUPC might negotiate with Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) to lower the tax on CLT registration for IP communities
- MLMUPC committed to continue to help register 10 CLT’s as stated in the Joint Monitoring Indicators (JMIs).
- The disclosure of state land was requested by CMDP, and the MLMUPC said that they will have a meeting with the Department of Land Management at the end of the month. H.E Sor Sovann added that problems happen because map are unclear
- MLMUPC will speed up the process of land registration, at Tomnob 2 & 3 at Kbal Tnal
- MLMUPC is willing to cooperate with LWD over a request for staff capacity building funded by Fin Church Aid
- CDA said that DO1 had a negative on community forestry, but MLMUPC suggested CDA to get back to the community and check whether the titles were given to families
- The , MLMUPC, represented by H.E Sor Sovan, acknowledge the presentation and the findings of the report
“It is good meeting between NGOs and the government. This is a positive sign about work between the parties that can improve the life of the communities. We appreciate how open the MLMUPC are and I hope this collaboration will get better because this could benefit more communities. We wouldn’t be able to achieve these results without the cooperation and hard work of our members,” said Mr. Tek Vannara, NGOF’s ED after the meeting.
