Organization : Ministry of Planning
Type of Facility : Identification of Poor Households Programme (IDPoor)
Country: Cambodia
Website : http://www.mop.gov.kh/Projects/IDPoor/tabid/154/Default.aspx
Identification of Poor Households Programme :
The Identification of Poor Households Programme is led by the Ministry of Planning (MOP) in collaboration with the Department of Local Administration (DOLA) of the Ministry of Interior.
Related : Ministry of Planning Identification of Poor Households Programme Equity Card Verification Cambodia : www.statusin.org/7441.html
The programme is implemented with funding by the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Union, AusAID, UNICEF, and the Royal Government of Cambodia, with technical assistance provided and coordinated by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
Objective:
The overall objective of the MOP Identification of Poor Households Programme is to officially mandate National Standardised Procedures for Identification of Poor Households and to achieve their implementation throughout Cambodia.
What is Identification of Poor Households? Why do we need it?:
In Cambodia, poverty-oriented development planning and service provision has not focused enough attention on targeting assistance to poor people. Where household targeting has been implemented, many institutions have developed and applied their own procedures and criteria for identifying beneficiaries. This means that results are not comparable with each other, and are generally also not shared with other organisations and institutions.
Identification of poor households, according to the procedures used by the Ministry of Planning and partner organisations, seeks to determine which households are poor and the poverty level of these individual households in rural villages. The purpose of identification of individual households is to directly target services and development assistance to the poorest households in a village in order to help lift them out of poverty and to protect them from the impact of shocks (e.g. serious illness, crop failure) which may deepen their poverty.
The Identification of Poor Households data can also be used for calculating comparative poverty levels of villages, communes, districts and provinces. Service providers can use this data for targeting poorer communes or villages, and the poor households within those areas.
In Cambodia there are many potential uses for data on poor households, such as the provision of free or discounted medical services (e.g. through Health Equity Funds or Social Health Insurance), scholarships or other financial support to poor school pupils and students, rural development and agriculture-related services, allocation of social concession land to the poor, and many other uses. There is also potential for developing conditional or unconditional cash transfer programmes. IDPoor is now an integral part of the Government’s National Social Protection Strategy 2011-2015, which was approved by the Council of Ministers on 18 March 2011. The NSPS states that
“The RGC intends to make IDPoor the primary targeting methodology across all social protection schemes, while still allowing for the use of complementary methodologies where their use is justified.”
Procedures and Questionnaire:
A key emphasis of the IDPoor Programme has been to use identification procedures that maximise implementation by government structures and village representatives, in order to build local capacity and enhance sustainability. The procedures also involve a high degree of participation by and consultation with villagers themselves. This increases the transparency of the process and the accuracy of the results, and therefore the acceptability to local people and to data users.
The process for identification of poor households consists of seven steps, which are summarised below:
Step 1: Establish and train the Planning and Budgeting Committee Representative Group (PBCRG) at the commune level
Step 2: Establish and train Village Representative Groups (VRGs)
Step 3: VRG compiles List of Households in the Village, conducts household interviews, considers special circumstances of households; and after a Commune Review Meeting, compiles and publicly displays the First Draft List of Poor Households in the village
Step 4: VRG conducts Village Consultation Meeting on First Draft List of Poor Households, receives villager complaints, prepares and displays Final Draft List of Poor Households, and submits the List to the Commune Council
Step 5: Commune Council reviews and approves Final List of Poor Households, sends data to Provincial Department of Planning; and distributes Equity Cards to poor households (after data entry and photography in Steps 6 and 7)
Step 6: Provincial Department of Planning enters all data and household photos into Provincial Database of Poor Households
Step 7: Photography of poor households
A standard questionnaire is used in all areas, in order to optimise comparability of the results of identification among households and among geographical regions (village, commune, district, province). The questionnaire consists of a set of commonsense proxy indicators for poverty, agreed by the national Working Group on Identification of Poor Households, which are mainly based on easily observable and verifiable assets, but also include a number of other issues such as dependency ratio, school attendance, crises or shocks, and household composition. Interviews are conducted by Village Representative Group members themselves, whose local knowledge makes it easier to verify whether respondents are accurately reporting their situation, as well as to assess the special circumstances of households.
You may download the Procedures and the Questionnaire used by the MOP for identification of poor households from the “General Information” panel at the bottom of this webpage.
Sub-Decree on Identification of Poor Households:
The promulgation and promotion of a Sub-Decree on Identification of Poor Households (expected in 2011) will enhance efficiency by providing a legal basis to actively discourage duplication of effort in conducting identification of poor households. The sub-decree will mandate the Ministry of Planning as the sole government body responsible for managing identification of poor households, and the IDPoor Procedures as the standard national system for identification of poor households. It will also stipulate that in areas covered by the IDPoor Procedures, all service providers must use the IDPoor data as the primary method of targeting beneficiaries.
Further information about the IDPoor Programme may be obtained by contacting the IDPoor Programme at email: idpoor@mop.gov.kh or tel: (023) 220740. You may also contact the following persons directly:
Mr Keo Ouly:
Programme Manager,
Ministry of Planning
Mobile: 855 (0)12 819549
Email: ouly.idpoor@gmail.com
Mr Bou Vanna:
Public Relations Manager
Mobile: 855 (0)12 470245
Email: vanna.idpoor@gmail.com
Mr Som Chandararith:
Deputy Team Leader
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
Programme “Support to Identification of Poor Households Programme”
Tel: 855 (0)23 220740
Email: chandararith.som@giz.de