Prime Minister Hun Manet delivers a speech at the closing of the Ministry of Social Affairs’s annual meeting on February 6. STPM
The government’s popular Cash Transfer Programme will be wound down from March, with another social protection scheme, the Family Package Programme, to be kick-started in April, announced Prime Minister Hun Manet.
The programme, which has been applauded by multiple international NGOs and foreign diplomats, was announced in June 2022 by then-Prime Minister Hun Sen. It helped to support the Kingdom’s most poor and vulnerable households hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
As of January 24, the programme has benefited around 710,000 households who hold IDPoor cards, with over $1.3 billion in cash transfers across 42 rounds of payments, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation.
While presiding over the closing of the ministry’s annual meeting on February 6, Manet noted that he introduced guidelines on the Family Package, as well as social protection in response to emergencies, on December 5 last year.
“The national assistance programme social assistance for families, or ‘Family Package’, is a collective national programme. It is permanent, and will provide benefits to impoverished households and their members,” he said.
He explained that the Family Package is the result of the integration of four current social assistance systems: Cash support for pregnant women and children under 2, scholarships for students from impoverished families at primary and secondary schools, cash assistance for people with disabilities and cash assistance for people aged 60 and over.
“In addition to the integration of these four systems, the Family Package will provide based support for families with members who are living with HIV/AIDS,” he said.
“Step-by-step, it will also replace the Cash Transfer Programme which began during the pandemic. The Family Package will be fully implemented from April onwards,” he added.
Manet also elaborated that the government’s financial support and intervention programmes, some of which began at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, are not intended to foster a culture of dependency. Rather, they aim to assist individuals during a specific period of need, enabling them to manage their lives more effectively in the long run.
The premier said he had recently fielded an enquiry from an unnamed person who questioned whether the government’s cash transfer programmes would cultivate a reliance on government assistance.
“To those who wonder why the government introduces social support programmes instead of encouraging self-sufficiency, please examine the detailed programmes closely. We provide short-term assistance to empower them for long-term survival. In turn, they contribute to the state, fostering the growth of the country’s economy,” he explained.
The government has disbursed over $1.4 billion to five intervention programmes since the onset of Covid-19.
Additionally, a vocational training programme has been initiated for 1.5 million youth from impoverished and vulnerable families, along with the introduction of agriculture officials at the commune level.
“The answer to the question of whether social protection programmes lead to a culture of dependency is no, they do not. They actually create a culture of independence. We have to accept that our people need support during difficult times,” he added.
He instructed the authorities in charge of IDPoor evaluation to shorten the application period for the cards, in order to be flexible and ensure that vulnerable families receive the assistance they need as soon as possible.
“Some people asked why some families which own assets like tractors still hold IDPoor cards. The fact is that five years ago, they were poor. Their situation has improved, but they are still on the list of IDPoor families,” he said, noting that the opposite trend was also true, with people who were previously in good financial condition falling into poverty, often due to unsuccessful businesses.
He reiterated the government’s commitment to leave no one behind.
“We are not a rich country, but a developing one. We built our country from a poor one to one with lower-middle-income status, and we have the goal of becoming a developed country. Despite this, our assistance programmes were introduced before we had even graduated from poor status,” said Manet.
According to the prime minister, his government will spend nearly $450 million to implement the six priority programmes that he introduced at the onset of his mandate.
Social affairs minister Chea Somethy explained at the January 6 meeting that his ministry is reforming the social affairs sector to increase household economic resilience and promote people’s livelihoods, as well as reduce poverty, through support for poor and vulnerable households.
Citing inflation, he also requested approval for an increase in funding from 5,000 to 12,000 riel ($1.25 to $3) per day for each of the people staying in the state-run rehabilitation centres which the ministry supervises.
Somethy asked that a budget package be prepared for the establishment of a centre which will accommodate victims of human trafficking, homeless children, orphans and children whose parents have migrated.
The minister also suggested that in order to improve effective social affairs services, the number of commune-level officials be increased.
