Stop all Fee Requests to Enter the Province, Hun Sen Tells Kep Province Governor

The prime minister’s message followed a widespread controversy regarding a complaint made by a visitor who was in Kep province on April 14. Photo from Kep Administration

PHNOM PENH — Visitors are not required to pay fees to enter Kep province, and it is a stupid decision to allow such payments to be collected, Prime Minister Hun Sen told Kep Governor Som Piseth.



“I have just found out about this [fee] problem this morning on Facebook,” Hun Sen said in a voice message on Telegram on April 15. “I can't believe that this happened.



“I advise the Kep governor to work with the Ministry of Economy and Finance as well as other relevant ministries to completely eliminate all contracts in which there is a tax payment to enter [tourist sites] in the province,” he said.



The prime minister’s message followed a widespread controversy regarding a complaint made by a visitor who was in Kep province on April 14. According to his Facebook post, the visitor was demanded to pay in order to enter a tourism site.



“[I] wanted to visit Kep instead of Kampong Som province [Preah Sihanouk province], but I ended up getting disappointed [because of] this problem,” he said. People in other provinces, he said, “wish to have many tourists visit their provinces, but this province is different.



“[We] have just arrived…and we are already required to pay,” he said. “People have to pay even if they just drive, passing by on the street.”



Calling on the Kep provincial administration to look into this matter, the visitor said that there would be no more visitor to the province. “You have good (tourism) sites, but instead of promoting it, you actually demand payment,” he said.



Informed of the situation, Prime Minister Hun Sen called Governor Som Piseth’s decision to allow such payment collections to take place “stupid” and “not so smart.”



“It's not something—not a smart thing—that should be done,” Hun Sen said. “It's a stupid thing for the provincial administration itself to do, and so it is for the institutions to allow such thing to be done there.



“It's an order not to demand any payment from people who are visiting the province,” the prime minister told Piseth. Profits will be much higher if people can visit without paying fees, he added.   



Following Hun Sen’s message, Som Piseth told Kep provincial institutions not to demand payments from people visiting the province as of April 15, 2023.


Related Articles