City Hall to Modernise Public Markets

• 31 December 2015
• Local News
• 1090 Views

Phnom Penh City Hall has announced it will modernise all the capital’s public markets to improve the welfare of buyers and sellers, and beautify the city.

In an exclusive interview with Construction and Property Magazine, City Hall spokesman Mr. Long Dimanche described the plan to modernise over 20 public markets under its management in the capital and transform them into multi-storey buildings offering comfort, hygiene and safety to both buyers and sellers.

“Now, it is the 21st century, and City Hall doesn’t want to see this kind of market in the capital anymore,” he said.

However, unlike previous public markets like Olympic or Ou Russey markets that were transferred to the private sector for development and where vendors must lease their stalls, from now on all public markets will be solely developed by City Hall, and vendors won’t have to purchase a lease. “This is a totally free offer from the government,” Dimanche stressed.

“We [the government] have spent so much of our budget to build roads, bridges, drainage systems and many other public utilities for our citizens to use freely, so why we can’t build public markets and offer these opportunities free to our citizens as well?”

According to the plan all public markets to be developed in the future will follow the Central Market management model where vendors don’t have to buy their stalls, but rather pay an annual management fee to the designated autonomous market authority. The fees collected fees as a result are used to finance the management, hygiene, maintenance, security and other services for the market.

“So far, City Hall doesn’t have headaches with the Central Market anymore because they have an autonomous authority that manages the market nicely and effectively,” he said. “We don’t even have to worry about paying the salaries for the staff there as the authority is responsible for it themselves.”

Doeum Kor Market Development

Doeum Kor Market is the first public market that City Hall aims to transform into a modern, multi-floor facility since it has long been considered the dirtiest market in the city.

But this planned development has caused significant concern among vendors there who believe that once the new market is built, they will lose their stalls during construction or even have to pay rental fees and other expenses after the new market is completed which will hit their livelihoods hard.

In response to misunderstandings among hundreds of market vendors, Long Dimanche provided clear clarification on City Hall’s policy, confirming that, “We won’t transfer this market development to a private company and we will develop it with our own budget, so vendors won’t have to worry that they will pay for their stall or lose their selling locations.”

City Hall’s fundamental goal is to build a new multi-storey market and vicinity areas that are tidy, clean and comfortable for both sellers and buyers. Once the new market is open, vendors that have stalls in the current market will get new one(s) of the same size and location free of charge in the new market building so they can continue selling their products without having to pay for a lease.

The new market will be a multi-storey facility constructed to proper building standards, with fire safety systems and gates, parking floors, hygiene and a proper management system just like the Central Market.

City Hall may build few floors first to accommodate current vendors and will build more at a later date depending on the available budget.

Initiated by Phnom Penh Governor H.E. Pa Socheatvong, City Hall has declared that there won’t be any development if even a single vendor doesn’t accept the government’s solution.

“Only a consensus by all vendors to accept the government’s solution can lead to the market development there. If not, we won’t kick off this development there.” Long Dimanche repeated the governor’s commitment saying that, “We want to ensure that all vendors are satisfied with our development planning that has been proposed to help them.”

At present, City Hall is conducting a census to find out the exact numbers of vendors with registered stands and unregistered stands including mobile vendors and those people living in the area surrounding the market who could be impacted. Later on, these respective groups will meet separately to reach a consensus until an overall consensus has been achieved. The design for the new market building has not yet been drawn up.

Once this market development plan has been successfully implemented, it will serve as development template for the other 20 public markets in the capital.