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ILO in Cambodia: Ten years after
Over the past decade, the ILO has improved the lives of tens of thousands of Cambodians. From the devastation of war, economic isolation, and central planning, Cambodia has emerged as a State with functioning roads and canals, an active tourism industry, and jobs which provide a decent existence for its inhabitants. This article reviews the evolution of the ILO programme in Cambodia, which can be described as "The Work of Giants".
Ten years ago, the ILO moved into Cambodia within months of the signing of a peace agreement and started offering what everyone wanted most: employment. Since then, the ILO Employment Generation Programme (EGP) has created millions of days of paid employment, provided training in a host of trades, setup a thriving microcredit sector, and built rural roads and bridges. More importantly, the ILO has found ways to generate sustainable development, while creating local ownership and exemplifying the ILO standards for which the Organization stands.
"The results achieved by this programme have been most impressive," says Trevor Riordan, one of the earlier EGP programme coordinators. "The EGP has proved to be an excellent model for providing an emergency response to a country emerging from armed conflict. The ILO programme in Cambodia was one of its most successful technical cooperation programmes in the Asia and Pacific Region. The innovative approach of combining skills development, small business training and labour-based technology, in one programme, greatly contributed to its success."
After 20 years of war, Cambodia was one of the world's poorest countries with an estimated per capita income of US$150. Poverty was widespread, particularly in the small towns and the rural areas where infrastructure had been destroyed, agricultural land lay fallow due to land mines, and economic activities were extremely limited.
While it was recognized that agriculture provided the largest number of employment opportunities, it was also clear that many unemployed and underemployed members of vulnerable groups in Cambodia could not be absorbed by the agricultural sector alone. Employment and income-generation were seen as key issues in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Cambodia.
In an effort to overcome these devastating effects, the ILO, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), formulated the EGP, which aimed at creating non-agricultural employment and income-generation opportunities for specific target groups. The EGP integrated three components, along with international labour standards: labour-based rehabilitation, vocational training, and small enterprise development.
The labour-based infrastructure rehabilitation and maintenance project established offices in provincial departments of public works and identified priorities in close collaboration with provincial authorities. Road construction was a top priority for local leaders. In 1992-93, the ILO turned to LBTs (labour-based technologies) to rehabilitate Cambodia's secondary and rural roads. Work began in the northwest provinces in response to a request from UNHCR (the UN High Commissioner for Refugees), whose task was to resettle people and give them access to food distribution. Within eight years, ILO infrastructure projects in Cambodia gave local workers over 3 million workdays' direct paid employment. More than 540 kilometres of rural roads and 80 bridges, 439 culvert rows, and 21 watergates were rehabilitated and maintained. A 1999 survey of the Puok market found an average fall in the price of goods by 16 per cent since the ILO completed rural roads to it.
At Angkor Wat, the ILO joined forces with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to help restore its value as a tourism destination. Unskilled workers soon found work clearing vegetation from and around the monuments. They also revived the drainage system, recovered statues from insecure areas, ran a rubbish-collection service and put up scaffolding for restoration specialists.
Labour-based technology served to rehabilitate 44 kilometres of secondary canals in Siem Rep province. As with road work, the project injected much more into the local economy than direct wages: it enlisted haulers to transport materials, manufacturers to make hand tools and baskets, and contractors to prefabricate culverts and other concrete structures. It gave work to equipment repair shops and service suppliers. An estimated US$4,000 entered the local economy for each kilometre of canal or road completed. By increasing water-storage capacity, the irrigation works gave agriculture a much-needed boost and helped stem the tide of rural-urban migration. Within eight years, ILO infrastructure projects also trained hundreds of managers, contractors and government staff in business, accounting, language and computer skills on top of labour-based construction and maintenance techniques.
To be able to sustain the growth made possible by better infrastructure, people needed business acumen and capital. Business and employment conditions in Cambodia were especially bleak on the signing of the peace accords in 1991. Most people in rural areas lacked employable skills. The labour market was largely unorganized and there was no reliable information system or investment programme to bolster it.
In a bid to help the thousands of returnees from the border camps, internally displaced people, demobilized military personnel, and vulnerable members of the society, the ILO organized vocational training in several provinces by providing them with the skills to generate income. The vocational training project established a National Training Secretariat in Phnom Penh with the Ministry of Education, and established a decentralized network of seven provincial training centres and outreach training units providing skill-development programmes linked to self employment and small business opportunities. The training was delivered through a flexible approach of mobile training in the villages close to the participants' homes. This was critical for many of the women who were heads of households, as it allowed them to undertake training while still being able to maintain their household responsibilities. Previously many women had been forced to drop out of the training courses as they were unable to combine the training with their other responsibilities.
The first phase of the vocational training project (April 1993 to May 1996) was designed to provide skills training as quickly as possible for the large numbers of returnees and internally displaced persons. The vocational training project trained 4,900 people (42 per cent women) in a diverse range of skills ranging from two-week courses on mushroom growing to four-month courses on building construction. During the same period, 4,000 trainees received small business training; 3,000 trainees (67 per cent women) borrowed to start or expand a small business; 11,000 women in microenterprises received credit (average loan of US$ 40 with a recovery rate of 97 per cent).
During the second phase of the project (July 1996 to October 1998), which concentrated on institutional capacity-building and policy issues, about 2,500 persons were trained. The employment or self-employment success rate for participants attending the second phase of the project was 81 per cent, with higher rates for skill areas such as vegetable growing, shell craft, and television repair. The average monthly income earned by the participants after the completion of their training was US$33, that is, at least twice as much as the salary of a teacher. One of the most successful courses was radio repair, with over 90 per cent of the trainees who completed training courses finding employment or self-employment, with an average income of US$46 per month. Matching the training provided to the income-generation or self employment opportunities available was one of the main reasons for its success. Once sufficient people in one district were trained in a particular field, the training programme would move to another district. This prevented the market being saturated with too many of the same products.
For businesses of any size to develop they must have capital. In rural Cambodia, where income figures are among the world's lowest, savings (and banks) are often non-existent. But some 80 NGOs have taken the lead in supplying seed money for micro and small enterprises. The most important NGO involved in microfinancing is the Association of Cambodian Local Economic Development Agencies, better known as ACLEDA. ACLEDA opened its doors in 1993, with the support of the ILO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). By October 2000, it had become a licensed bank, with 49 branches and offices in 14 provinces, chiefly in rural areas. Its loan-repayment record is now greater than 95 per cent. ACLEDA offers three kinds of loans: microcredit loans, collateralized small-enterprise loans, and small-scale industry loans. ACLEDA has become the most active lender in Cambodia, with a loan portfolio of some US$15.6 million.
Respect for the rights enshrined in international labour standards is a fixture of the ILO's work in Cambodia. The conditions of recruitment and employment embody the core principles in ILO Conventions against forced labour, child labour, and discrimination. They offer guidelines for good practice. Half of the workers of an ILO-sponsored construction site were women. Men and women were equally paid and remunerated fairly. Many of them received special training, and ACLEDA has given female entrepreneurs substantial management and business training. ACLEDA has built gender balance into its recruitment policy, and is committed to hiring women and men in equal numbers. The vocational training project developed a special entry level test to ensure that women, and other disadvantaged groups, were given priority access to all courses. The ILO also began addressing the needs of the disabled by identifying specially adapted, commercially available and affordable farming and road building tools, in order to integrate them into the labour market.