Hotels to Join City Cleanup Drives
James Brooke / Khmer Times Share:
PHNOM PENH (Khmer Times) – As
part of a spreading reaction against trash-strewn streets, the Cambodia Hotel
Association, an influential tourism industry group, is organizing its members
to regularly clean up their immediate neighborhoods.
Luu Meng, president of the
association, said hotel members in Sihanoukville agreed last weekend to
organize clean up drives of their streets six times a year.
“In Sihanoukville, we already
discussed with the board members, and the guys said they would organize this,
with more people joining,” said Mr. Meng, a noted chef and a hotel
investor.
“One hotel coordinates with other
hotels to clean up together,” he said. “We want the hotels to be part of the
leaders.”
Hotel managers in Phnom Penh said
they have lost potential conventions because of the capital’s dirty streets.
Business visitors from Singapore,
Hong Kong and Bangkok, say Phnom Penh’s laissez faire attitude toward litter
reminds them of their own cities 40 years ago. And warm nostalgia is not the
emotion they feel when they see uncollected trash.
Mr. Meng said his association is
forming a clean-up task force with Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment and
officials in the Phnom Penh government. The association’s membership includes
about 100 of the most important hotels in Siem Reap, Sihanoukville and Phnom
Penh.
Increasingly, he said, hotel
members, are not waiting for government action.
“Yes, you can talk about government
this and government that, but us, what we do, what we educate our own
employees, is important,” Mr. Meng said in an interview at his Almond
Hotel.
“But the hotel association
encourages its members to group together and do it,” he added.
He said hotels are increasingly
adopting the model of a group of hotels in Sihanoukville. There, hotel managers
lead teams of employees to clean up streets in front of hotels six
times a year.
“We want the hotels to be the leaders
of the clean up campaign,” said Mr. Meng, who will open two new boutique
hotels inPhnom Penh in the second half of this year.
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