Speech at the Closing Ceremony of 2010 Stocktaking and 2011 Direction-Setting Conference

Ministry of Interior, 24th February 2010

Your Excellency Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Interior,
Your Excellencies Deputy Prime Ministers, Senior Ministers, Ministers, Members of the Royal Government,
Your Excellency Commissioners and Officers of the National Police,
Your Excellencies Governors of the Municipalities/Provinces,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished National and International Guests!

Today, I am pleased to participate, once again, with Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, who are the management of all levels in the Ministry of Interior, in the 2010 Stocktaking and 2011 Direction-Setting Conference of the Ministry of Interior in this newly-built conference room in this auspicious occasion. Like every year, I always take my tight schedule to attend the annual stocktaking conference of the Ministry of Interior in order to encourage the management and officials of either administrative or national police under the Ministry of Interior and Sub-national Administration as well as to share my viewpoints and recommendations related to the key tasks of the Ministry of Interior and Sub-national Administration aiming to effectively take part in the process of nation building to achieve improvement of all sectors.

On the behalf of the Royal Government and myself, I would like to specifically extend my appreciation to H.E. SAR KHENG, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, who has made greatest efforts to manage tasks under the authority of the Ministry of Interior to achieve noticeable achievements.
Taking this occasion, I also highly convey my compliment and highly value the management, administrative officials and national police officers as well as all levels of authorities of the national administration for their concerted efforts to fulfill duties and produce enormous achievements for the nation and people in 2010.

I am of the view that this conference has brought lessons, experiences and better recommendations to successfully implement strategy, policy and national development plan in 2011 in order to vigorously ensure peace, political stability, and firm protection of sovereignty, national integrity as well as security and social order in the Kingdom of Cambodia. Indeed, the vital 2010 achievements were the social environment of stability, which provided the opportunity for the Royal Government to lead Cambodian economic recovery from the hardest time of economic crisis along with fully ensuring the integrity and sovereignty of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Obviously, our national achievement has been made by the joint efforts of the whole Royal Government with comprehensive supports from our people in which the Ministry of Interior did make huge contribution.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to emphasize our essential national achievements as follows:

First: Maintaining Security, Social Order and Protection of Territorial Integrity: The national police forces have excreted effort to actively maintain security and public order nationwide, and reduce crimes rate to approximately 10% lower, as compared to 2009. Along with this, the success of cracking down crimes has also made 75% increase of total crimes occurring in society, and these are showing efforts and competence of our national police forces. Moreover, our national police forces have courageous sacrifice to maintain security, prevent and crack down criminal acts along the borders and to co-operate closely with the courageous Royal Cambodian Armed Forces at the front line to protect territorial integrity and sovereignty as well as fighting against activities of foreign military acts, that encroach again and again into the western part of the country, especially in Preah Vihear Temple area, which enable us to firmly protect integrity of our beloved nation. Taking this special occasion, on the behalf of the Royal Government and people of Cambodia, I would like to extend my admiration and sincere appreciation for this sacrifice and bravery.

Second: Decentralization and de-concentration Reform through the Principles of Sub-national Democratic Development.
We have jointly promoted to deepen this reform through putting out the 10 years national program approved by the Council of Ministers on 28 May 2010. Based on this national program, the National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development (NCDD) has introduced a first 3-year implementation plan to determine directions, goals and other important activities of this reform, from to 2011 to 2013. In parallel, even this reform has required us to reconfigure the structure and governance system at the sub-national level; this reconfiguration process does not obstruct the ongoing tasks of providing public services, development and works of other sectors at the sub-national level administration

Third: Coordination Management Tasks: The Ministry of Interior has led the coordination, and has accomplished lots of achievements in registering the birth, marriage and death of the citizens, providing honors and medals to donors, managing the tasks at the borders, of communities, non-governmental organizations, political parties, coordination with other ministries and institutions in addressing issues outside the court system, prisons management, and drafting laws and standard letters aimed to promote the state of law within the framework of duties and responsibilities of the Ministry of Interior.

Starting from the situation in 2010, and some trends of that evolving situation in the country and abroad, we can assume thatPeace, Security, Social Order and Stability are fragile, and can become chaotic at any time without an advanced prediction because there are many external factors such as global economic crisis, regional and global security, international terrorism, drugs and humans trafficking, violation of territorial integrity and sovereignty etc. All are factors outside our management.

In order to achieve success of our commitment and increase the spirit of fighting with obstacles as mentioned above, I would like to provide some crucial recommendations that the Ministry of Interior and authorities at all level need to continue as below:

First: the Ministry of Interior with other relevant ministries and institutions has to persistently defend the territorial integrity and national sovereignty, and maintain the strength of our national unification with measures featuring ownership to prevent and stop provocation, separation, and establishment of illegal forces that lead to domestic division and conflict, and do not allow other countries, seizing the opportunity, to use our territory against the neighboring countries.

Second: the Ministry of Interior and General Commissariat of the National Police need to be more attentive to taking care of and strengthening the national police in terms of education and providing adequate shelters, stations, police posts, protection network, equipment and supply for daily livings.

Third: the Ministry of Interior as well as police forces at all levels need to be-prepared with sufficient qualification, aimed to create an environment with security and good social order in order to ensure that the senate election at the 3rd mandate on the 29th January 2012, the commune council election at the 3rd mandate in 20112 and the members of parliament election for the 5th mandate in 2013 take place smoothly with security, freedom, accurateness and justice.

Fourth: the Ministry of Interior needs to continue cooperation with other countries as partners and national and international organizations, as well as promoting spirit of responsibility in preventing criminal activities of all sorts across the borders, especially imposing preventive measures to stop terrorism acts from happening in Cambodia and focus on other unsafe activities such as drugs trafficking, humans trafficking, money laundering, or weapons trading etc. Along with this, the Ministry of Interior also needs to impose efficient measures on managing the departure-arrival of the country thoroughly and properly, researching on important clues or suspicious signs in the country and promoting strict implementation of immigration laws.

Fifth: the Ministry of Interior needs to continue encouraging the implementation of “Commune-District Safety Policy”extensively in the nationwide framework and marshalling people and other organizations such as civil society organizations, private sector and other relevant entities to involve with movement for security protection and social order at places, aimed to create strong foundation for security at the lowest level with reliable and happy environments at all places for the community development. In this spirit, the consensus commanding committee at the capital, provinces, cities, communes, districts and villages need to work harder to perform your duties as responsible commanders in order to successfully manage the implementation of security tasks and social order at your places by not regarding this as a work of police or for police alone. In parallel, to increase the efficiency of the implementation of “Commune- District Safety Policy”, the Ministry of Interior and the sub-national level administration necessarily need to have stocktaking and draw experiences, and identify the weakness and strengths and other confronting problems in order to disseminate and learn good implementations from one place to another. At the same time, I think the Ministry of Interior needs to diligently promote and encourage the “Commune- District Safety Policy”into an vigorous movement that is active at the community level through the participation to protect the grassroots, the consultation on security tasks, public orders at the commune-district level, community forums or the reporting of information related to suspicious activities and important information that is crucial to the investigation to be made by the police forces.

Sixth: the Ministry of interior must continue its effort to further combat all criminal activities, in particular to prevent any violation and investigate criminal offences to be convicted as much as possible in order to enhance social justice and rule of law in Cambodia. Indeed, although the number of infringed activities was generally decreased about 10% in 2010, the number is still limited and is not considered as a case and some infringements such as murder is characterized as inhuman, causing loss of our people’s properties and lives, frightening and annoying our citizens’ daily lives. In such consequence, commander-in-chief of all levels, in particular commander of municipal, provincial and district police station need to think of and draw attention to seriously investigate the cause of infringement toward committing crimes or negative social phenomena and then taking preventive measures to depress all kinds of violation at your responsible area. Moreover, the Ministry and General Commissariat of the National police must expand their services proven rapidly and closely for our people, increase daily security guard at the villages and create 24 hour work shift to accept the suggestion of our people as well as provide hotline call services and the way of communication with the police officers when urgent emergency is needed.

Seventh: the Ministry of interior must continue its attention to extensively crack down drug trafficking, by not allowing Cambodia to become the source of producing all kinds of drugs and collect all investigative evidence, seriously destroy the root of drug trafficking by not allowing any passiveness in our police forces and effectively eliminate the source of drug distribution and use as well as taking measures to control drug addicts and continue to encourage participative activities from other organizations and associations to rehabilitate those drug addicts to be more reproductive. Having said that, the Ministry of Interior must mobilize participation from and cooperation with all levels of relevant institutions to prevent and depress human trafficking, child exploitation and women and children trafficking.

Eighth: the Ministry of Interior, national police forces and high commander, who have led the implementation of land traffic law at national and sub-national level, must further continue their efforts to implement existing measures and regulations and search for new measures to strengthen the implementation of land traffic law, maintain public discipline and minimize traffic accidents. In addition, they are to continue to further improve their performance by focusing on education of traffic law understanding and measures are seriously taken to promote the spirit of law obedience rather than police officers. In this sense, law obedience must be made at all time and we must promote the measure of strict punishment on certain offensive acts such as drunk driving, over-speed driving, driving car with no license plate, illegal licensed plates bearing the name of armed and police forces.

Ninth: the Ministry of Interior including civil and police administration must focus on its key duties and responsibilities such as control of illegal use of gun, issuance of Cambodian identification, preventing of fire fighting to achieve good result, aiming at enhancing social disciplines. In addition, the Ministry must continue to strengthen capacity-building of national police forces and civil servants including enhancing virtue, morality and the spirit of honesty for our nation and people in particular the spirit of professionalism as well as the provision of skill training to our staffs.

Tenth: the Ministry of Interior must cooperate with relevant ministries and institution to implement carefully the national program under decentralization and de-concentration framework in compliance with democracy at the national level, which is at the stage of deepened reform as it impacts not only on administration at the sub-national level but also at the central level. Under this framework, the ministry has to:

1. Examine on responsibilities and resources in all sectors managed and administrated by its central organization to delegate responsibilities and resources including financial and human resources to the administration at sub-national level.
2. Prepare financial system and asset of sub-national level by clearly defining authority framework of each administration at sub-national level to manage the use of budget and asset aiming at responding to key priorities of local communities.
3. Prepare the separate statute for the sub-national administrative staffs to make sure that each administration has the rights to manage those staffs, aiming to ensure accountability for the people within their administrative competency.

In actuality, the process of this reform requires gradual development based on “the implementation, the study to gain experience from the implementation” by relying on the practicality of political, social and economic situation of Cambodia. The expansion of this reform agenda at the municipal/provincial, district/khan levels is the process, which is full of rationalization based on the good experiences we have achieved during the process of reform at the commune/sangkat level for almost 1 year. There have been lots of studies carried out by the independent institutions, which have shown that Cambodian people have been fully satisfactory with the works done by the commune/sangkat councils, including the services and development allocated to their communities. Along with that, those studies truly reflect the people’s support, which is the participation to promote the popularity of the Royal Government in implementing this significant reform agenda.

Eleventh: the Ministry of Interior must pay attention to highly prioritize to achieve the human resource development. In this connection, I would like to request the attention to be paid to solving two major challenges: (1) training and human resource development, conforming to the requirement of the socio-economic evolution, and (2) preparing to substitute the annually increasing numbers of the civil servants, who are to retire as required by law. Each ministry/institution is required to prepare human resource development strategy and to suitably prepare the substitution officials for the short-, medium- and long term period. Therefore, the Ministry of Interior must urgently design human resource development policy and strategy as well as studying about the substitution officials in both civil administration and national police. At the same time, various ministries/institutions must also prepare their own human resource development policy and strategy with appropriate method in order to update these policies and strategies to be in line with the requirements for national socio-economic development.

Before ending, I would like to, once again, express appreciation and highly value the ministries/institutions, inter-ministerial committees, national police general department and municipal/provincial, district/khan and khum/sangkat authorities, national and international development partners and all compatriots to closely cooperate with each other in order to maintain peace, security, social order and stability of our nation.

At the end, I would like to wish Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, and all Participants the four gems of Buddhist blessing:Longevity, Nobility, Health and Strength.

May I now declare the closing of 2010 Stocktaking Conference and 2011 Direction Setting of the Ministry of Interior!