Ochateal Beach among other beaches in Sihanoukville wll be invested by private company in the near future to meet international standard. The site is more attractive to national and international tourists than other beach.
Recently, many vendors at Ochateal beach have written letter to Sihanoukville municipal authorities to allow them to rebuild their businesses and homes at nearby Otres beach after their wooden structures were bulldozed at Ochateal site during an eviction on June 27, 2006.
Ochateal beach has been granted a 99-year lease to Sokimex petroleum company to build a new hotel on the 43 hectares of land around it. As you know, this company owns presently Sokha beach and constructed the luxury Sokha hotel on this land aslo.
According to The Cambodia Daily, Sok kong, president of Sokimex pretroleum company, said that vendors may be allowed to return and rent plots from company once construction of the resort is complete.
By the way, the future visitors will have to pay fee to access the site. Nowadays, they have no need to pay fee anymore. They just only pay for meal, renting place and so on. After this resort is controled by private company, it will affect visitors, who are the poor people because they need to pay more to use the site. In the future, all resorts will be controled by private companies.
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This is indeed a tight issue you made us all aware of especially for us here at Sihanoukville.
Internationally I know that one cannot own privately the beach side (seashore)… but I don’t know (in Cambodia) how many meters from the sea can one start to build on as private land?
Let’s hope they do not seal off the entrance to swim or to walk leisurely or for people to sell along the beach which is national property.