Ms. Sim: Now I have Land. It is a Great Asset
Land grabbing issue in Cambodia
Sim Naren and her children are busy clearing grass off her land to plant more crops. A small patch of her two hectares is already cleared, with rice and corn and fruit trees growing on it. But there is a lot more work to do. Naren, a 45-yearold widow, puts down her hoe and walks toward her visitors, pressing the palms of her hands together in the traditional Khmer greeting.
Asked how she likes her new farm, Naren smiles and says, “I am so happy to be here. Now I have land. This is a great asset for me and my children.”
Naren is one of 549 poor and land poor families in Sambok and Kor Sang communes in Kratie province, the first group to have moved to a new area along National Road 7, about 20 km from Kratie provincial town. She and the others were chosen to receive two hectares of agricultural land and residential land under the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development (LASED) program supported by the World Bank and the German technical development organization GTZ.
Because Naren had no land before, survival for her and her children depended on selling rice cakes and second-hand clothes in her community. But Naren said those enterprises were too small and couldn’t help her family to have a better life like other families who had land for cultivating. Because of that, all her children dropped out of school to help her make a living.
When she moved to her new land Naren was given initial assistance to get started in her farming life: a knife, ax, hoe, seed, and $50 cash.
Another project beneficiary, Nam Saleav, one of the poorest villagers from Kor Sang village, Changkrong commune, Kratie province, opens his plastic bag carefully and pulls out his valuable ‘land receipt’. He smiles and says “I have a receipt now and I am looking for my residential plot.” He pauses, then continues: “I found my farmland plot, but I haven’t had much time to work on it yet, because I have to work for others to get money to buy food for my family.”
LASED is a four-year project being implemented in Kratie, Kampong Cham and Kampong Thom provinces. It is intended to help the Government to implement its social land concession program and to provide support to landless and land-poor (less than half hectare of land) families.
(Source: The World Bank Newsletter, volume 7, Number 6/7, June-July 2009)