Residents on Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar peninsula embroiled in a land dispute with tycoon Pung Khieu Se’s Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation were to submit a petition to City Hall today following a new compensation offer from the authorities last week.

Nan Ony of the Housing Rights Task Force said that the land owners had been “deeply disappointed” by the new compensation offer.

Villagers could either sell their land for the price they paid for it, or sell 90 per cent for the same price, with 50 per cent of the land going to the company, 40 to the government and the remaining 10 to the villager, he said.

Reth Dyna, a community representative, said villagers would petition the government today to give them land titles.

They did not want to move into homes built by OCIC, he said, conceding that eight families had already taken up the company’s offer.

The 387-hectare satellite city project will cost $1.6 billion, and villagers there claim to have lived on the land since before 1993.

Klaing Huot, Chroy Changvar district governor, said that City Hall had “promised to cut out their old villages from the project”, but asked them “to cooperate with the government to sell their land”.