1. 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. 2 Pilot CBMS Pilot CBMS

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

4. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

19. 19 THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR ATTENTION !