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The ancient Angkorian ruins faced the danger of destruction as in the past years millions of visitors and job-seekers rushed into Siem Reap, where the temples and the infrastructure were just unable to accommodate their overflowing admiration and aspiration, the Cambodian Daily reported here on Saturday.
"We don't have enough infrastructure to welcome mass tourism. We are not ready. If one million come a year, the environment will be destroyed very quickly," the paper quoted Tep Vattho as saying. She headed the development department of the Apsara Authority, which was entrusted by the government to manage the Angkor Archeological Park.
Officials were expecting 2 million visitors for Angkor this year, twice the number of 2005, said Siem Reap's Provincial Governor Sou Phirin, adding that between November and December alone, 500,000 tourists would pack the town.
Meanwhile, Siem Reap's population was exploding too. People flocked in from the eastern provinces of Kompong Cham, Svay Rieng and Prey Veng, driving the number of local residents up by 50 percent over the last six years, namely from 100,000 in 2002 to 150,000 this year. It was expected to rise to 185,000 in 2015 and 210,000 in 2020, the paper reported.
Already, fleets of tour buses and a growing army of motorbike taxi drivers clogged the narrow roads leading to the temples. In the Angkor park, thousands of pairs of feet treaded everyday on ancient stone walkways -- so many that the government was considering requiring visitors to wear protective plastic slippers. Downtown, hotels sprouted up like mushrooms and garbage floated in the river.
"There are squatters along the banks. We have an irrigation web. But actually this irrigation web has become a sewage web because of development," said Vattho.
Currently, the French government was financing a 5-million dollars wastewater plant on the east side if the town, while the government was seeking funds from the Asian Development Bank to build another.
The infrastructure development always lagged behind the actual need, as over 150 hotels were planned to be built in addition the current 87, according to the government, which largely encouraged the building boom as well as the tourism fever rather than regulating it. After all, everyone could benefit from the boom at current times.
In 2004, international tourists spent 97 million U.S. dollars in Siem Reap, according to official figures. The figures might be tripled this year.
Local employees in the tourism sector pulled in salaries totaling 14 million U.S. dollars in 2004. More than 5,000 people worked in hotels alone and overall tourism created about 29,400 jobs in Siem Reap.
To make things worse, international and domestic efforts to salvage the heritage from predictable destruction were repeatedly doomed.
In 2003, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to set up a committee on sustainable tourism, complete with a panel of experts to evaluate the impact of development plans on the wide Siem Reap area. But so far, no one provided funding to hire the experts.
The UNESCO started to seek full protection of Angkor, after the Paris Peace Agreement was established in 1991.
Angkor is now on UNESCO's World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger.
Tourism is Cambodia's second largest foreign currency generator and Angkor contributes the lion's share of the incomes.
(Xinhua News Agency September 16, 2006)
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