Sreng meets with Japan environmental official
PHNOM Penh municipal governor Khuong Sreng met with Japanese State Minister of the Environment Minoru Kiuchi on Friday in the Kingdom’s capita l.
Sreng met with the Japanese officia l “to discuss work related to waste management, transportation, sewage systems and other works to improve the env ironment and push development in Phnom Penh”, the Phnom Penh Municipalit y Facebook page said.
Municipal Hall spokesman Met Meas Pheakdey declined to comment further on the matter, referring The Post to the municipalit y’s Facebook page. “Please v isit t he Facebook page. Our administration posted it t here a lready,” he said.
Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) programme director Em Khemara said the Phnom Penh municipalit y does not prov ide good waste collect ion ser v ices.
“Because [the Phnom Penh municipality] signed a contract only with Cintri, cooperation in waste management is not very good. Maybe they do not have the mechanism in place to monitor Cintri’s waste collection,” he said.
Khemara said Cintri’s ser v ice had been problematic. They are often late and spill fluids on t he st reets which af fect people’s healt h. “We welcome any help in restoring the sewage and waste management systems,” he said and ca lled on the aut horities to implement ef fective laws to improve waste management.
“So far a number of people have been fined for l it tering. Sometimes the relevant ministries simply make announcements, but loca l aut horities had not ta ken any serious action yet,” he said.
In Januar y, STT released a 40-page English language report after conducting extensive research in t he capita l’s 12 dist r icts.
Through questionnaires, inter v iews and focus group discussions, it found t hat 99 of Phnom Penh’s 277 urban poor communities – equal to 35.7 per cent of t he capita l’s population – still received no waste management ser v ices.
In May, Khuong Sreng signed a research report conducted by Japan Internationa l Cooperation Agency (Jica) over 12 months on sewer system development at Choeung Ek lake in t he capita l’s Dangkor dist r ict. The move a llowed Jica to design a development project for t he la ke.