Working towards a Commune-Based Poverty Monitoring System in Cambodia: An Update

1. Working towards a Commune-Based Poverty Monitoring System in Cambodia:An Update By Kim Net and Chan Sophal Cambodia Development Resource Institute Presented at the General PEP Meeting in Dakar, 16-20 June 2004

2. Pilot CBMS Pilot CBMS

3. Contents • Overview • Work Plan • Pre-testing • Full CBS Census • Challenges • Recommended Solutions • Conclusion

4. Overview (1) • Cambodia CBMS is strongly supported by Cambodian Government (Try Sothearith’s presentation). • Cambodia CBMS is implemented by Supervisory Team from CDRI, NIS and Seila Program. • The Provincial Statistics Office provided an official to participate in the project and liase between the Supervisory Team and Commune Councils.

5. Overview (2) • 12,000 households in two provinces to represent different better-off and poor region. • Three communes from one district in each province. • A census of all the households in each commune in every village. • The results will be presented at the village and commune level.

6. Overview (3) • The commune council formed a committee of 3 or 4 members to be trained and to oversee the work. Each member is provided with an honorarium of $1.50 per day for a period of three months. • The village chief was asked to help the enumerators in household listing and geographical guidance. They receive a minimal honorarium for their assistance.

7. Overview (4) • One to three enumerators per village were recruited jointly by the commune council and CBMS Supervisory Team. • They are amongst the villagers who had a reasonable level of education and experience in communal work. • Each enumerator is paid based on the amount of households they interview. The rate is $0.25 per questionnaire of 5 pages. On average, an enumerator can interview 6 households only per day.

8. Overview (5) • Data is processed manually with a subsequent verification by computerisation. • The enumerators enter the data manually in Excel-format print-out sheets, one household on one row. They also do tally on the forms. • Basic frequency calculation is done for each village by the commune council members. • Each village will have a “statistics book”, which will be added up to produce a “commune statistics book” and a “commune poverty report”.

9. Work Plan (1) • Jan. 04: Development of data collection tools. • 02 Feb.-15 Apr. 04: Pre-testing of census in one village in every commune studied. • 1-10 May 04: Conduct of training of enumerators and data processors for full census. • 10 May-18 Jun. 04: Conduct of census in all villages • 21 Jun. - 30 Jul. 04: Consolidation and processing of data.

10. Work Plan (2) • 2- 31 Aug. 04: Analysis and reporting writing by commune councils • 16-31 Aug. 04: Analysis and validation of survey results • 1 Sep.-20 Oct. 04: Report writing by Supervisory Team • 3-5 Nov. 04: Local seminars • 18 Nov. 04: National Seminar • 10 Dec. 04: Final Report for CBMS Network

11. Pre-testing • Adopted during the final design. • All the instruments and methods were applied in one village per commune. • The commune council members received training that would be applied to the rest of the villages. • Pre-test has been very useful and is highly recommended.

12. Full CBMS Census • With experience from the pre-test, training for enumerators was clearer and quicker (one day for each commune). • Council Members became useful commentators /trainers during the training. • Interviews were done by enumerators under supervision of commune council members, CBMS provincial partners, and CBMS Researchers.

13. Challenges (1) • Asking about income of the household proved to be very difficult. People tried to hide their income or probably could not recall it. • There is usually a gap between income and expenditure. Income is often smaller than expenditure. • People first ask for donations when enterviewers come to their house before asking questions. • Rich households are more difficult to ask than poor households.

14. Challenges (2) • A number of households work very far from home, difficult to interview. • Far distance between villages makes commune council members difficult to monitor the interviews. • Most of villagers think it is unimportant to answer because they feel they will not have any benefits from this work.

15. Challenges (3) Capacity of enumerators • Due to lack of educated villagers, we need to recruit enumerators from other villages. • It takes more time than expected to train recruited enumerators in the rural areas.

16. Recommended Solutions (1) • Be good relationship with people interviewed. • Explain clearly about objectives of project before asking. • Any case there is problem happened in the village, commune council members first play an important key to solve under monitoring by PPD and CBMS team. • High gap of income and expenditure must be much concentrated. • Enumerators have to be patient with all kinds of villagers.

17. Recommended Solutions (2) • Ask for all information from the household especially on expenditure and all jobs to earn income in order to ensure the balance of income and expenditure. • Assign nearest commune council member to be responsible for far village.

18. Conclusion • With strongly supportive and effort of commune council members and team researcher, pilot CBMS will be successfully implemented. • CBMS plays a major role for local development planning makers, which goes a long with decentralization of the government. • From CBMS, Commune councils are provided better knowledge and accurate information for a good local development and governance. • With achievement of pilot, CBMS can be expanded in Cambodia.

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