Cambodia's poverty crisis

Rapid urban development in Cambodia has resulted in changes in Phnom Penh with Cambodians missing out on the economic growth, 13 years since the end of civil conflict.

Presenter: Sen Lam

Speakers: Pou Sothirak. former Cambodian Industry minister and ambassador to Japan and senior visiting research fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studieg.

SOTHIRAK: The issues of poverty in Cambodia has been a very serious one and before Cambodia was thrown into war conflicts, but after that we have peace, but as the country emerged, there is a lot of problem concerning how to improve the livelihood of the people. The government have been working very hard. There has been good economic progress in the mid 2005, 2006, 2007, double digit growth, but unfortunately, this growth is narrow based and it did not trigger down to the base.

LAM: Is the government to your mind, is it conscious of the importance of letting it trickle down, spreading the wealth a little bit?

SOTHIRAK: The government is I think conscious, however, at this stage of development, Cambodia mainly rely on export, particularly government. Definitely there are some improvement in term of getting employment, but basically the poor does not live in the city. They live in the rural area and 90 per cent of them are based on farming.

LAM: Well, you mentioned the garment factories and the garment factories, of course, have been closing due to a slump in demand, particularly from the United States. Have the poor in Cambodia been hard hit by the two years of economic crisis, the world economic crisis?

SOTHIRAK: Oh definitely. Cambodian has been affected by the global downturn, particularly when America stopped buying. There is a lot of lay off. And this is again an economic policy that rely on export solely to be sustainable, and therefore the livelihood of the people at large are not protected.

LAM: Well, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party was returned to government in the 2008 elections, largely with the support of the poor I might add to win outright majority after years of political bickering and uncertainties in parliament. Do you think the poor has benefited from the two years of total CPP government rule?

SOTHIRAK: At the moment, the government has been doing a lot of infrastructure work at the village level, building roads and water reservoirs and digging wells as well as building school and rural people have seen this work with the government and I think that's in large part this is how the CPP is still very top choice for the people. They see this infrastructure work.

LAM: So the people, actually the poor in Cambodia, they do see the Cambodian Communist Party as the way out of their poverty?

SOTHIRAK: It's the Cambodian People's Party, not the Cambodian Communist Party.

LAM: Yes, that's right. I beg your pardon. Yes, the CPP ? .

SOTHIRAK: Yeah, they have seen the Cambodian People's Party under the leadership of Prime Minister Hun Sen have been working for them to solve some of the critical problem, particularly rural connection between cities and rural area.

LAM: It's well documented that corruption has been a major issue in Cambodia. To your mind, is the government doing enough to address this?

SOTHIRAK: Oh corruption is a very peculiar and very difficult issues. Yes, Cambodia is still seen widespread corruption, and this is due in part because of the low salary of the civil servants and therefore many public services such as health care or education has been hard hit because of this low salary. And I think the government have already been establishing. There is a law, anti-corruption law and now there is a unit, that there is an agency that deal with anti-corruption established and there is a no shortage of political will to try to combat corruption, but corruption itself is already widespread and its deep rooted and I think to solve these corruption issues, first of all, government need to pay a lot of attention to good governance, meaning ensuring the judicial system is working to protect everybody and equally in front in the name of the law.

LAM: In otherwords, a strong and professional independent judiciary?

SOTHIRAK: Exactly. Secondly, the civil servants. The civil servant need to be pay more and at the same time, they have to have some kind of check and balance, so that if there is a corrupt case, these individuals, they will put into, will be punished accordingly.

LAM: Well, it's been said that Cambodia is still a long way from meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals and of course one of those goals is eradicating poverty and one way of doing that is, of course, providing education. I understand that half the children in primary school in Cambodia don't finish their education. Is something being done to address that?

SOTHIRAK: Yeah, that is very clear that one of the major difficulty to eradicate education, to eradicate poverty is to try to bring up the level of education and at the moment, there are in the rural area a lot of drop out rate and they don't have enough school and also because of the teacher with low salary, the teacher sometimes teach only half day. So these are the major problem that the government need to address.