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

1
Working towards a Commune-Based Poverty
Monitoring System in CambodiaAn 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 Sotheariths 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.

19
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR
YOUR ATTENTION !