Hundreds of people in southern Cambodia used tractors and motorcycles to block a major national highway for three hours on Tuesday to demand that provincial authorities address severe water shortages that have damaged rice fields.
Protesters tied tractors and other vehicles together across National Road 2 and used loudspeakers to rally farmers and other residents of Takeo province and to plead for help from Prime Minister Hun Manet and other government officials.
Takeo resident Aob Ratana said in a Facebook live video from the protest that authorities could solve the water shortage by opening a dam in the province’s Bati district to allow water to flow into the Bati River, which runs alongside rice fields.
Residents were angry that this particular request had gone unfulfilled, which was a major reason behind the blockage of National Road 2, which runs between Phnom Penh and the Vietnamese border.
“The rice fields are dying and will be gone if they do not help solve the problem,” he said. “The district and provincial governments are not helping to solve the problem for the people.”
Minister of Agriculture Dith Tina, Minister of Water Resources Tho Jetha and Minister in charge of Disaster Management Kun Kim met with the demonstrators at the site of the road blockage and promised to work on the issue.
Im Rachana, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture, didn’t answer when asked by Radio Free Asia how the government planned to solve the lack of water in the area.
A hard time this year
Cambodian farmers have faced several droughts over the last 20 years.
At least 1.1 million hectares of rice crops were affected and more than 30,535 hectares were seriously damaged by drought during the 2023-2024 dry season, which typically runs from November to April, according to the National Disaster Management Committee.
The national government should work to restore natural irrigation systems, such as existing lakes and canals, and should also look into building new canals, said Dy Kunthea, a board member of the Cambodian Farmers Solidarity Organization.
Aob Ratana warned on his Facebook live video that Cambodia’s overall economy would face trouble if too many rice fields fail this year.
“There is water,” he said. “But it is not being distributed to the people, and they say that the people will have a hard time this year.”
Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed.