Minister of Interior Sar Kheng urges all relevant institutions, including national-level administrations, to strive to address people’s concerns and requests when they are voiced in the comments section on his Facebook page.
According to Sar Kheng’s Facebook monitoring group, nearly 1,800 users had posted their requests for help from state institutions to the page, over 800 of which had been addressed in the course of three years.
A report released by the group last week said that from 2020 to the end of 2022, they had received requests from 1,768 users, with 802 addressed and 647 under examination. Certain requests were referred to other relevant institutions.
Of the 802 complaints and requests, 275 were resolved by the National Police; 401 by the General Department of Administration; one by the General Department of Logistics and Finance; four by the General Department of Prisons; 63 by the General Inspectorate; 46 by the General Department of Identification; and 12 by the General Department of Immigration.
Sar Kheng said in a social media post that the progress of this work could be better accomplished by the combined efforts and better cooperation between the leadership and officials with the interior ministry and the Facebook monitoring group.
Sar Kheng said the head of each general department and sub-national administration has to assure the public that no problem within their jurisdiction is too small for them and to do their best to resolve those problems.
“Every remaining problem we’ve been informed about, we should strive to resolve. We must also make sure that the problem is addressed comprehensively, adequately and justly. We don’t just make paperwork and start administrative procedures,” he said.
Chea Sokunthea, the supervisor of the Facebook monitoring group, said that since its establishment in July of 2020, it has addressed the comments and requests without fail.
However, he said that land disputes were difficult to sort out and took time for the group to address, so the group had referred them to local authorities in cooperation with ministry teams to solve them.
Am Sam Ath, deputy director of rights group LICADHO, said it was good to set up the group to process complaints or requests from social media users as a way of helping them save travel time and money. He said that this way, they could also raise the problem of local officials’ inaction and indifference to their problems directly with the top leadership.
Sar Kheng thanked the people for their comments and requests because it facilitated the resolution of problems without burdening the courts and he also asked for understanding when the group and relevant parties are slow to address some cases adequately and totally as certain cases take time and require procedural implementation.
