Several families yesterday burned tyres to protest the bulldozing of their land to make way for a road that will run next to a billion-dollar satellite city project on Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar peninsula.

Built by City Hall, the road will be set 100 metres west of National Road 6A. It will run alongside the Chroy Changva Satellite City, planned by tycoon Pung Khieu Se’s Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation, which is embroiled in a land dispute with six communities living on the site.

As four bulldozers levelled plots they claim belong to them and security guards watched on, the families said they were offered inadequate compensation in exchange for about a third of their holdings.

“We are not against building the road, but the company and authorities should compensate us . . . in advance; don’t just come and clear our land like this,” said Uy Phary, who claimed she was offered $15 per square metre for land which she believed is worth $400 per square metre.

Her neighbour, Hul Savoeun, 45, said she had owned the property since 1993 and called the clearing of her crops and fence a “serious offence”.

Chroy Changvar District Governor Klang Huot said compensation would only go to residents whose houses are threatened by the road, calling those with who were only losing parts of their “huge land” narrow-minded and greedy.

OCIC spokesman Touch Samnang said that the firm was not involved in building the road.