… On behalf of the Royal Government of Cambodia and my wife, I wish to covey my sincere appreciation and thanks to our people and monks who are present here today. I have a great pleasure to be in the province of Udor Mean Chey to put into use some of the achievements and would be grateful for keeping my trip a while from the last time that I went to visit Anlong Veng together with the offering to build few more school buildings and a road which connects it to the district of Banteay Srey (Siemreap province). We have a part of the college’s building done but we have more to build at the contribution made by Oknha Ly Yung Phat and Oknha Lim Heng. HE Governor Pich Sothin of Udor Mean Chey already mentioned in his report that together with the construction of three college’s building of fifteen classrooms and two primary school buildings of twelve classrooms at Samraong, we have three more school buildings of 16 classrooms to inaugurate in the district of Chong Kal and five buildings of 30 classrooms in the district of Anlong Veng, four buildings of 20 classrooms in Banteal Ampil, 6 buildings of 33 classrooms in Tropeang Prasat – together in all we have 23 buildings of 126 classrooms to be inaugurated today.
In 1964, Preah Bat Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk created for the first time the province of Udor Mean Chey only to be dissolved after the war in 1970s. After the general elections of 2003, we have re-created the provincial administration apart from Siemreap. The idea of creating the province in the past had been a brilliant one because as a part of Siemreap, the province would be too large to cover. Having done so, we still have an area of about 200 Kilometers bordering on with three provinces of Thailand – Borei Ram, Surin and Si Saket. Yet, the number of population is still small. We have made basic changes as our people are no longer the victims of war as before. Our senior citizen and monks are not concerned about fighting thanks to our win-win policy. We are now united under the roof of the country’s Constitution and HM the King, which is the special point of our country’s situation allowing us to achieve what we all have wished so far.
I hope that sooner or later the city of Udor Mean Chey would develop into an exemplary city as the province already has got huge roads and all institutions have been in complex building already. I warn that the buildings should be kept intact and not to sell them. As to areas along the border with neighboring countries – with Thailand or Vietnam or Laos, we must try to transform them into the zones of peace, friendship, cooperation and development. In the past we used to mobilize lots of soldiers and artilleries into these areas and now I wish to bring about these places into areas full of factories, exchanges of goods as we had done in the area of O Loeung of Banteay Mean Chey province and Neang Kok of Koh Kong Province – which are to be transformed into special economic zones. We have two border crossings here – O Smach and Chuam Srangam where the Thai authority helped build and pave the roads down here and to Banteay Srey.
As far as the province is concerned, the area of 3,306 hectares had been under mines whereas in 2005, 423 hectares have been de-mined and in the year 2006, we have planned to de-mine another 435 hectares. This is indeed an area of priority here. Mr. John Sanderson visited Anlong Veng – a place where he had not visited when he was UNTAC commander. I told him we come into this without wasting a single bullet.
As we have here Governors of the provinces of Borei Ram, Surin and Si Saket of Thailand to allow the Cambodian people go to get health treatment in their hospitals as it is only 42 Kilometers from here but 469 Kilometers to the capital city of Phnom Penh. I remembered that HRH Princess Sirindorn supported very much this idea. I think any cooperation ranging from human to animal health issues has been a good thing. The people of Udor Mean Chey also have a good price electricity – 1100 Riel per KVA – which we could say another positive form of cooperation.
The confiscation of over two thousand hectares of land should be well studied and carefully administered for social affairs. Some said the Royal Government wishes their people to be uneducated while thousands of schools that my wife and I have built. They instead do not want the Government to build schools because it would be easier for them to cheat our people when they are uneducated…/.
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