Phnom Penh, December 5-6, 2011
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen distinguished national and international guests,
Dear All Participants!
It is my pleasure to be here in the opening of this important national forum on “National Social Protection Strategy for the Poor and Vulnerable People in Cambodia”.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to praise the management and
officials of the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development for
organizing this forum. I highly value the management and officials of
the council who have done a splendid job and realized numerous
achievements for the country and the people in the area of social
protection, especially for the poor and vulnerable both in urban and
rural areas.
This national forum is of great importance for the
management and senior officials of the Royal Government who are in
charge of overseeing social and local development work so that they can
monitor and review the policy and updated progress of priority areas,
especially in the face of the global economic crisis and climate
change.
I am convinced that the National Social Protection Strategy for the Poor and Vulnerable People
which is being disseminated in this forum is the actual implementation
of the National Strategic Development Plan Update 2009 – 2013, the
socio-economic agenda of the Royal Government. This clearly reflects
the firm determination of the Royal Government in restoring and
developing the economy as well as alleviating poverty incidence and
realizing the CMDGs.
The Royal Government of Cambodia updated its National
Strategic Development Plan in 2009 to reaffirm its focus on pro-growth
and poverty reduction strategies, including the expansion of social
protection coverage, assisting the people to adapt to crises, creation
of human capital, productivity improvement, sustained and equitable
growth. This clearly indicates that the Royal Government still
considers the poverty reduction and social protection as its priority as
it is working extremely hard to alleviate poverty incidence by: (1)
ensuring long-term growth of 6- 7% per annum, (2) distributing the
benefit of growth equitably, and (3) ensuring the sustainable use and
management of natural resources.
In particular, over recent years, the Royal Government has
been doing its utmost to overcome all impediments caused by the global
economic crisis and domestic natural disasters and, as a result, we
achieved decade’s average growth of 6% and poverty reduction was
trimmed to 26% in 2009.
In 2011, the growth was initially projected to reach 7%,
but due to uncertainty surrounding the US and EU economies and impact
of the recent flood, we lowered our growth prediction to around 6.4%.
Annual inflation rate was contained at 5.5%. Our international reserve
has been increased to USD 3 billion, equivalent to 4 months of import.
The poverty rate declined from 47% in 1993 to 30% in 2007, followed by
further decline to 26% in 2010. We are convinced that the poverty rate
will be further trimmed to 19.5% in 2015 to correspond to the CMDGs.
Moreover, the Royal Government of the Fourth Legislature
of the National Assembly also gives high priority to the implementation
of social safety net policy, including the improvement of workplace
conditions, the enforcement of the Law on Social Security, the
implementation of pension scheme for disabled workers and their
dependents, and protection of workers governed by work regulations and
assurance of work-related accident for all workers. Along with this, the
Royal Government has been providing support to the disabled and
families of the dead soldiers, as well as veterans and retirees through
the implementation of a far-reaching pension system by continuing the
implementation of the national social security fund.
Within this context, the Royal Government will further
enforce the Law on National Social Security Fund and the Law on the
Establishment of the National Veteran Pension. The Royal Government
will continue to increase the salary of civil servants by 20% each year
and take charge of paying 6% of the civil servants’ salary to the
national social security fund till the end of the current Royal
Government’s term.
In general, the social safety net or social protection are
not something new to the society of Cambodia. In particular, the
Rectangular Strategy – Phase II stipulates good governance in social
protection by strengthening institutions and cooperation with
development partners, and expanding social services and rescue programs.
Along with this, the Royal Government has formulated the National Social Protection Strategy for the Poor and Vulnerable People to
transform our vision and target into a real implementation to respond
to the concern and needs of the people, especially the poor and
vulnerable. The implementation of this strategy will require the
strengthening of existing interventions and institutional capacity, and
creation of new programs to address current loopholes. The next step
of this strategy’s implementation is to identify short-term actions to
maintain the stability and sustainability of social protection progress
achieved so far. In the medium and short term, the national social
protection strategy will prioritize the establishment of an efficient
and sustained social safety net system that focus on the poor and
vulnerable, with social welfare services for the vulnerable. In the
long term, the National Social Protection Strategy for the Poor and the
Vulnerable will define a sustained and deepened framework of social
protection for all Cambodian people, with provision of acceptable
package of basic needs and services.
Along with this, the Royal Government is also implementing
social protection-supported activities by improving human capital in
health and education sector, and other social sector activities as well
as other social interventions including the (a) reduction of the
poor’s vulnerability, (b) natural disaster relief measures, (c)
assistance for the effected people, (d) the expansion of rehabilitation
and integration programs for the disable, drug addicts, trafficking
victims and under-age wrongdoers, and expansion of welfare programs for
elders, orphans, widows, poor families with women as heads, female
victims, the homeless, veterans and their families (e) the prevention
of crime and protection of community safety at communal/sangkat level,
district/khan level, municipal/provincial level and national level by
cooperating with development partners and other stakeholders.
Moreover, the Royal Government has been implementing the ideology of “letting no one die of starvation nor ignorance”
in addition to the social protection mission, especially for the poor
and vulnerable people. Through implementing this ideology the
government has been providing foods for those people in need during the
farming season and has been prepared to tackle any problems that arise
from unexpected flooding or drought. For instance, during these past
two-three months the government has taken immediate measures and paid
high attention to the wellbeing of those flood affected victims both
during and after the flood by helping regenerate farming activities to
ensure that no one die of starvation nor ignorance.
Taking this opportunity, in order to ensure social
protection for the poor and vulnerable people with broad participation
from all relevant stakeholders and to ensure effective reduction of
poverty and urban and rural gap, I would like to raise the following
recommendations:
- Coordination: Social protection for the
poor and vulnerable people is a cross-sectoral work which requires the
coordination and harmonization of effective intervention and
cooperation among competence ministries/institutions as well as active
relation with development partners and civil society organizations that
support this sector. Since most programs of social protection are
cross-sectoral in nature, I would like to urge for the strengthening of
facilitation mechanism heads by the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Sector Development and Rehabilitation
and relevant ministries/institutions to avoid work and
regional/geographical duplication, harmonize policy options and work
procedures and to coordinate the use of resources and budget provided
the government and development partners.
- Identification of the poor and vulnerable people for policy implementation:
In order to transform social safety net into a comprehensive and broad
social security regime, Cambodia must be careful with the issues of
social fragmentation which cause by paying unbalance attention on
certain group of people within our society. Hence, I would like to urge
comprehensive and broad identification and update of poor and
vulnerable families identity frequently across the country. At the same
time, I would like the Ministry of Planning to cooperate with
sub-national authorities in leading the work of updating poor families
identity program frequently and seeking the possibility of expanding
its coverage nationwide.
- Sub-national administrative roles and capacities: To
realize the objectives of such strategy requires the combination of
programs that cover chronic poverty and starvation and those programs
for human resource capacity development that could transform the
vulnerable and poor people into effective production force of the nation
in order to actively contribute to country’s socio-economic
development. The roles of sub-national authorities are crucial and
necessary for coordinating work implementation, identifying the poor
and vulnerable people, and monitoring and evaluating the efficiency of
strategy implementation at the sub-national level. Taking this
opportunity, I would like the working group of the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Sector Development and Rehabilitation to
closely and effectively cooperate with the Ministry of Interior and
the National Committee for Sub-national Democratic Development in order
to strengthen the roles, responsibilities, and capacities of
sub-national officials in fulfilling their duties and effectively
implementing the social protection strategy.
- Monitoring and Evaluation: The
monitoring and evaluation of intervention programs and the whole
strategy is necessary for assessing the social protection policy in
Cambodia. The national strategy for social protection is a live
document which is flexible to changing circumstances and the sources of
vulnerability as well as assessing the systematic lessons learnt from
past implementation of programs and intervention. At the same time,
even though the monitoring and evaluation of special programs and
intervention will be carried out by competence ministries/institutions,
I would like the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Sector Development and Rehabilitation to
play a coordinating role and cooperate closely with the Ministry of
Economy and Finance, Council for the Development of Cambodia, Ministry
of Interior, Ministry of Planning, to conduct general monitoring and
provide technical consultancy for the implementation of the social
protection strategy. The Committee for Agriculture and Rural Sector Development and Rehabilitation
should also prepare independent monitoring on the strategy to support
dialogues that consists of true information on how to coordinate the
preparation of further strategies.
Before ending, I would like to urge relevant
ministries/institutions at the national and sub-national levels,
national and international development partners to abide by the general
principle of comprehensive implementation of programs as laid out in
this strategy paper to ensure effective implementation as planned.
Finally, along with the opening of the National Forum on the Dissemination of National Social Protection Strategy for the Poor and Vulnerable People in Cambodia, I would like to wish Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen with Four Gems of Buddhist Blessing.
EndItem.
