Female motodop a veteran of city streets – in a man's world

phnom penh post, WEDNESDAY, 26 AUGUST 2009 15:00 THA PISET

It's rare that you see female moto-taxi driver – and there are various reasons why. The Post speaks to one to learn more

Photo by: THA PISET

Future's so bright, got to wear shades? Um Chantorn strives to remain optimistic.

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I am young and fit enough to work as a motodop at the moment, but I don’t know what I will do when I get old.

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THE familiar cry - "Moto?" - comes, as always, but there is something different about it this time.
The ultra-competitive world of motodop driving in Cambodia is usually the domain of men. Men who will employ all manner of tactics and charm to ensure they're the person who parts you from your cash.

Yet if you search hard enough, you may well come across Um Chantorn, 37, a rare species in Cambodia: the female moto driver.
Um Chantorn has been ferrying passengers around Phnom Penh since she was 28 years old.

Since the breakup of her marriage in 2003, she became the head of her family, working to support her mother, two sons, younger brother, nephew and herself. She discusses her occupation with the Post and reveals how difficult it is to be a woman in a male-dominated world.

Why did you choose to work as a motodop driver in 2000?
Originally, I was a vendor in Phnom Penh, but I decided to become a motodop because many people owed me money for goods and didn't pay. I work as a motorbike taxi because I need to earn enough money to support five members of my family. I didn't want to be a driver originally; I just tried it for pleasure at first. After two or three days though, I enjoyed myself and became interested in the job. I've been doing it for almost 10 years now.

What are the main difficulties you face in your job?
The most pressing one is that I alone have to earn money for all the members of my family. Also, some people - especially male motodops - tell me that a lady should not be doing this kind of work. Some people say to me that if I don't have another job to do, I should go to work in a karaoke club. It is very tiring work as well; I am out under the sun from the morning until 8 or 9pm. I also have to be careful at nighttime because it can be dangerous. There are all sorts of people about after dark, and you can never be sure what drunken people are going to do.

What do you think when you hear people talk about you disparagingly?
I don't care what they say; I just do what I can. Everything is for my mother and two sons. I don't cheat people, and I don't rob people, so I have a clear conscience. If I sleep at home, I have nothing to eat. This is Cambodian tradition, I know, but I don't care because otherwise my family won't have anything.

How many customers do you have per day? How much do you earn?
I don't know the exact number of customers I have in a day. I just know that I earn 30,000 riels to 40,000 riels per day on average. Sometimes it is more than that, but sometimes I don't even earn 100 riels; it varies greatly from day to day.

Have you ever had a traffic accident?
No, I am always very careful when I ride my motorbike; I use a helmet and have a plate number.... I obey the traffic laws of our country. I am not proud on a personal level; the most important thing is that I ensure the safety of my customers.

Do you want to change your career?
Of course I do, but I don't have enough money to start a meaningful business. On the other hand, I don't like it when people owe me money, so being a businesswoman might be difficult.

What do you think about your future life?
I am young enough and fit enough to work as a motodop at the moment, but I don't know what I will do when I get old. It will make me very miserable because I am the one who earns money and supports the family. If I am incapable of doing that, I imagine I will be sad because it means I will have to rely on my sons to help me in the future.

Your career is pretty remarkable considering all the obstacles and difficulties. Do you have any reflections?
Women should never think they are inferior. This is still a problem in Cambodian culture. You have to do your best, get out there and work very hard ... and never, ever let people look down on you.

New Income from Woodcarving

2009-08-26

Women in remote Cambodian villages are turning to woodcarving as a new way to raise their standard of living.

RFA/Mondol Keo

Ni Tong, 17, carves a decorative vessel out of wood in Prongil village, Aug. 22, 2009.

BANGKOK—Woodcarving has emerged as a way for women in Cambodia’s remote villages to improve their lives, despite the difficulties associated with living far from traditional centers of commerce.

In Cambodia’s western Pursat province, 23-year-old Uk Srey Mom carves a piece of wood into the shape of a traditional water bowl and proudly announces that her family of five can finally enjoy a better living, even though they don’t own land for rice farming.

Srey Mom, a resident of Prongil commune in Pursat’s Phnom Kravanh district, says she is saving the money she earns from woodcarving to learn how to sew for a living.

“If I work hard, I can earn nearly 200,000 riel (U.S. $50.00) [per month]. If I don’t work too hard, I earn only 150,000 riel (U.S. $37.50) or 100,000 riel (U.S. $25.00).”

She carves intricate designs on her work, including knotted braids, vines, decorations in the Pha Chan style, and other forms particular to her province.

Srey Mom says small carvings can sell for 5,000 riel (U.S. $1.25) in the market while larger carvings can bring in anywhere from 10,000 riel (U.S. $2.50) to 20,000 riel (U.S. $5.00), depending on their size.

On average women from Prongil village, where Srey Mom lives, and the surrounding community make U.S. $1.00 a day or less for hard work farming local rice paddies.

Many other young women from nearby villages also come to Prongil to work as woodcarvers to support their families and save money to continue their education.

Ni Tong, a 17-year-old resident of neighboring Santreae commune, says she works part-time as a woodcarver to buy school supplies for her studies at Hun Sen Phnom Kravanh High School and to put some money aside for her family.

“If we work hard, we can finish carving one bowl a day, and the [workshop] owner will pay us after he has sold the bowl.”

Ni Tong says she makes more than 100,000 riel each month and says the experience has taught her the value of learning skills to support herself financially.

“I want the Royal Government to build schools to help poor children get a good education so that they have the knowledge to earn a living by themselves.”

Aiding communities

Carved wooden vessels are stored for sale in Prongil village, Aug. 22, 2009. RFA/Mondol Keo

Prongil village sits nearly 23 kms (14 miles) west of National Highway 5, which runs from the northwestern city of Sisophon to the capital, Phnom Penh.

The village is home to nearly 20 workshops that produce traditional woodcarvings, including flower bowls, water bowls, water pots, Buddha statues, and statues of celestial maidens known as “Apsara.”

Each workshop employs seven to 10 young women as carvers.

The workshops sell their woodcarvings to both tourists and local collectors.

According to village chief Yim Bunly, the majority of Prongil village was poor as recently as a few years ago.

But he says that since they developed a woodcarving industry, more than 60 percent of the residents now live above the poverty line.

The village has a population of 441 families, out of which around 90 families now depend wholly on work as woodcarvers and do not own rice paddies, Yim Bunly said.

He added that hundreds of young people who in the past might have been more likely to leave their villages to find work are now working locally as woodcarvers to support themselves and their families.

Chhim Sina, director of the Pursat Department of Women’s Affairs, said the negative impacts of job migration seem to have disappeared in Prongil commune after the creation of the woodcarving workshops.

“We have projects to help find jobs for women in their own villages so they don’t have to migrate, and from these I have observed that more young people choose not to leave home,” she said.

Prongil Commune chief Yan Thol says woodcarving has also helped to reduce crime and provides area youth with goals to work towards.

“It’s important that the people feel connected to the business in addition to making an income. This reduces the number of troubled youth in the area because they are busy working and don’t get involved in bad things,” Yan Thol said.

“In total, it helps society and helps with village chief management. The village chiefs don’t have as many difficulties because there are fewer problems in the area. When people have jobs to do … they don’t have many arguments,” he said.

Dangers of corruption

Keo Bunsieb, a disabled former soldier and now the owner of a woodcarving workshop with 10 workers, says the business has allowed him to support his family and helps a number of villagers to live better lives.

But he wants the government to protect the industry through regulation to allow his business and others to thrive.

“When the carvings are transported, they are often seized [by forestry officials]. This will lead to the disappearance of Khmer culture,” Keo Bunsieb said.

“[Also] if a tree falls and we don’t use it, it will be burned. But if we take it for carving, we can be accused of committing an offense,” he said.

Yim Bunly, the chief of Prongil village, agreed that without a comprehensive legal framework to protect the woodcarving businesses, owners and woodcarvers would suffer from corruption and extortion.

“There has been too much pressure on the people. Tax officials collect taxes from them, the military police take money from them, civilian police take money from them, and environmental protection officials take money from them.”

In an interview, Phnom Kravanh District Governor Touch Sambour promised to make the establishment of legal provisions to nurture and protect the industry a priority.

Original reporting by Mondol Keo for RFA’s Khmer service. Khmer service director: Sos Kem. Executive producer: Susan Lavery. Translated by Uon Chhin. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia.

Outlook mixed for garment sector

phnom penh post, THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2009 15:04 JAMES O'TOOLE AND NATHAN GREEN

BETTER Factories Cambodia, a division of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), released a report Wednesday citing continued improvements in labour law compliance among hundreds of Cambodian garment factories, but experts fear these gains are overshadowed by grim overall prospects for the industry.

Though acknowledging that approximately 60,000 jobs have been lost in the Kingdom's garment sector since November of last year, the ILO reported that 99 percent of surveyed factories paid full-time workers at least minimum wage, and that 84 percent of factories had at least one union. Just one underage worker was discovered among the 175 factories visited during the study, which was conducted from January 2008 to April 2009.

Questions remain, however, about how reflective the ILO figures are of the industry as a whole. Of 280 factories covered in the study, 258 were still operating as of July, Better Factories Cambodia manager Tuomo Poutiainen said.

In addition, any survey of the garment industry is complicated by the fact that many Cambodian factories are not registered with the ILO and the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC), Michael Smiddy, a senior consultant at the Phnom Penh office of Emerging Markets Consulting, told the Post earlier this month.

"There's a whole lot of subcontracting factories that are not members of GMAC, and how many people they employ and how many jobs have been lost there isn't clear," he said.

Garment factories are only required to register with the ILO and GMAC if they export their goods, and the ILO study was limited to registered factories. Tuomo Poutiainen guessed that there are between 70 and 100 subcontracting factories in Cambodia, but exact figures are unclear.

"That's a problem for the Cambodian economy - that so much of the economy is informal," Smiddy said.

Poutiainen said that this issue will need to be rectified if the Kingdom's garment industry hopes to match the efficiency and quality of competitors such as China and Vietnam, and urged subcontracted factories to sign up with GMAC and the ILO.

"Sooner or later, if they are serious and if they produce quality goods for exports, then they will join," he said.

The increased unionisation reported in the ILO study is another controversial issue for the garment industry. Strikes in Cambodian factories nearly doubled in the first six months of 2009 compared with the same period last year, from 12 to 23, with 17 coming from the garment sector, according to the Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

Roger Phan, secretary general of GMAC, said earlier this month that industry competitor Bangladesh was outstripping Cambodia in part because unions are weaker there and are therefore less likely to disrupt service.

"Whether [workers] understand that or not, we are losing business on account of that," he said.

Chan Sophal, president of the Cambodian Economic Association (CEA), also suggested that agitation for higher wages could be counterproductive for the industry as a whole.

"I think one of the reasons why the industry has not been very competitive is that [consumers] care more about prices during a low-income period.
They're not willing to pay a high price for labour-qualified products," he said. "I think the immediate future for the garment industry, especially this year, does not look very good."

Seventy-eight factories have closed so far this year, according to the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Ministry of Commerce has predicted that garment exports will fall by "at least" 30 percent in 2009. Even with these challenges, however, factories looking to cut costs would be ill-advised to reduce workers' wages, Tuomo Poutiainen said.

"The key concern remains how competitive the industry can be in terms of quality, price and lag times. The working conditions at the level they are is an added value, a big one," he said.

Kingdom leads Asia in cases of TB: ADB

phnom penh post, THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2009 15:04 MOM KUNTHEAR

CAMBODIA has the highest prevalence of tuberculosis in Asia and the Pacific, according to a new Asian Development Bank report - a fact that has come as no surprise to civil society actors, who say the disease has increasingly afflicted residents of poor rural areas as well as HIV-positive patients.

The 2009 version of Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific cited a tuberculosis prevalence rate of 665 per 100,000 people. The Philippines had the second-highest rate at 500.

The Cambodia figure has dropped significantly from 1990, when it stood at 928, but other countries that had previously reported similarly high figures have experienced more dramatic drops in the past two decades.

Mao Tan Eang, director of the National Centre for Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control (CENAT), said Wednesday that the government was working to address the problem by expanding access to drugs, adding that nearly 2,000 drug outlets had been established.

Kek Galabru, president of the Cambodian rights group Licadho, acknowledged that the government, and CENAT in particular, had tried to lower the rate, but said access to drugs and proper medical care was inadequate, particularly in rural areas. Many public and private health care providers are "incompetent", she said.
She said the situation was particularly "fragile" for HIV/AIDS patients. Citing figures from Medecins Sans Frontieres, she said the prevalence rate for that group had risen from 2.5 percent in 1995 to 7.8 percent in 2007, and could be as high as 15 percent today.

CITA calls for lower fees at universities

phnom penh post, THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2009 15:03 MOM KUNTHEAR

Muslim group donates to poor

AGerman Muslim aid organisation has given the Cambodian Muslim Students Association (CMSA) US$25,000 for loans to be administered to 100 families living along the railroad tracks in Daun Penh district, the district governor said Wednesday. "Each family will get $250 on loan for 10 months without interest," Sok Sambath said. CMSA Director Sous Mousine said the loan programme was part of the student group's effort to reach out to poor residents in the capital, adding that the use of the money would be closely monitored. "They have to do what they promised in a contract to use the money in a good way and to pay the loan back to us on time," he said.

MOM KUNTHEAR

THE Cambodian Independent Teachers Association (CITA) on Wednesday issued a statement urging the Ministry of Education to lower student fees at universities.

CITA President Rong Chhun said Wednesday that the association wants fees to drop at public and private universities to help students from poor families stay in school.

"If the Ministry of Education really wants to look out for the future of Cambodia's poorer students, this is a way to accomplish that goal," he said. "It would not be difficult. All the ministry needs to do is send a request to all universities."

Rong Chhun said many students decide to suspend studies after high school because of the high cost of university fees, which he said can run as high as US$360 to $400 a year.

He added that a more suitable rate of a $280 would ease the burden on parents who pay for their children's fees.

The recommendation follows a report by the International Labour Organisation on Tuesday suggesting that the global economic recession threatens to move more children into the labour sector as families who have lost jobs or suffered salary reductions found it too expensive to support their education.

Bill Salter, head of the ILO subregional office in East Asia, said a prolonged economic crisis will "erect new financial obstacles in front of children trying to access education" during a national workshop studying the impact of the global recession on child labour.

Tam Sokrey, 21, a second-year student at Phnom Penh International University, said he would have had to quit school next year because of high fees if he had not received sponsorship from a private foundation.

"I really want all universities to discount their fees ... because most of them cost too much money for most students," he said.

Pith Chamnan, a secretary of state at the Ministry of Education, said he would look into the matter.

"Once I receive the CITA statement, I will consider taking action. But I have not yet seen it," he said.

Obama's War: Afghanistan Is Spelled
V-I-E-T-N-A-M

Who benefits, other than the usual war-profiteering companies?

by Dave Lindorff, baltimorechronicle.com

Originally published in This Can't Be Happening earlier today, 27 August 2009

If the American people don’t rise up and demand an end to this thing right now, we could be in for another 8-10 years of brutal and bloody warfare, and in the end, the United States is, once again, going to lose.

President Barack Obama has staked his presidency on winning his “necessary” war in Afghanistan. Coming into office, one of his first acts, on Feb. 18, was to boost US troop levels in that country by 17,000, bringing the total number of soldiers and Marines in the country to about 57,000, to which one must also add about 33,000 other soldiers from NATO countries and Australia. That’s 100,000 foreign soldiers fighting against Taliban fighters.

Ominously, even with the new US troops, US military commander Admiral Mike Mullen this month has described the situation in Afghanistan as being “serious and deteriorating.” The Afghani national government—if an organization that is basically confined to the capital city of Kabul and a few other cities can be called a national government, is hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, and a current national election, which US forces sought to “protect” by sending troops to election districts, appears to have been a disaster, plagued by vote rigging and with low turnout.

The US war in Afghanistan, billed as part of a war on terror begun by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in September 2001, is now eight years old, and while the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan at that time has been ousted from Kabul, its insurgency grows by the day in strength and popular support.

The US, meanwhile, is identified as an occupier and as the sole support of a corrupt regime of drug lords, thieves and charlatans.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It is a replay of what America did in Vietnam.

The roots of the current Afghanistan War lie in the period when the Soviet Union was occupying the country and backing a Communist-led government in the 1970s, and the US was conducting a proxy war against the Soviets, with the CIA training and funding both the Taliban and foreign fighters, mostly Arab, led by the likes of Osama Bin Laden. In the end, the Taliban, with the help of groups like Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, triumphed, pushing the Russians out. But over time, as the Soviet Union crumbled and the US became more focused on the Middle East, successive US administrations became less and less happy with the power arrangement in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, following the US Gulf War in 1990-91, Bin Laden and other Arab fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere began to see the US as an enemy, and the US began to shift its military focus from being based upon anti-Communism to being anti-Arab, or at least anti Arabist, as defined as being opposed to those Arabs who wanted to overthrow the corrupt dictatorial leaderships in the oil states of the Middle East.

When the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001, the Bush/Cheney administration, which had already planned to overthrow the government in Iraq, launched an attack on Afghanistan, claiming that its Taliban government was harboring Al Qaeda, which was blamed for the attacks. The Afghanistan War was on. The Taliban was quickly ousted from Kabul, and Al Qaeda was largely driven into the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, but the war was not won. Indeed, since then, it has gone from bad to worse for the US, as the Taliban has clawed back territory and recovered much of its prior power.

The background of the war in Vietnam dates from 1954, when Vietnam, after a long struggle, won its independence from its colonial ruler, France. Two years later, the US blocked a UN-supervised national referendum, effectively splitting the country into two parts, a Communist north led by the hero of Vietnam’s independence struggle, Ho Chi Minh, and the south, led by the corrupt former French colonial stooge Ngo Dinh Diem.

With elections off, a small group of partisans, the Viet Cong, began an insurrection against the government in the South in early 1959, which the US became committed to opposing, initially sending in “advisers” to train and direct the South Vietnamese army. That war went from bad to worse, and when, in 1964, it became clear to US police-makers, that the Viet Cong were likely to win, President Lyndon Johnson made a decision to send in massive numbers of US troops and to begin a major bombing campaign against the North Vietnam. From 2000 US troops in Vietnam in 1961, there were 16,500 in 1964, and by mid 1965, 100,000. That number continued to rise, reaching 200,000 by 1966, and ultimately, at the height of the war, over 500,000. But the Viet Cong, and later, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese troops sent down from the north, were never defeated. Indeed, they continued to grow in number and in their control of the countryside. While they suffered horrific losses because of the superior firepower of US forces, and an American scorched-earth policy in the countryside, the Vietnamese forces continued to gain more and more support from the Vietnamese people. In the end, after suffering over 58,000 dead, the US cried uncle and left Vietnam. By 1975, the puppet regime in Saigon fell, and Vietnam was finally unified again, under Communist rule.

From the beginning of America’s involvement in Vietnam, the country, a poor nation of peasant farmers, was presented to the American public as a critical threat to the security of the United States. If Vietnam were to “fall,” Americans were told, the rest of Southeast Asia, like a chain of dominos, would fall—first Cambodia and Laos, then Thailand and Malaysia, then Indonesia, and finally, even Australia would be at risk. Of course, no such thing happened. The Vietnamese Communists were always, and remained, a nationalist movement, and after winning their multi-generational struggle for independence, focused on developing their country (though they did step in and overthrow a genocidal Communist regime that had taken over in Cambodia, installing a saner government).

It had been a giant scam on the American people from the beginning, and it ended up costing several million Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian lives, and 58,000 American lives, though that scarcely tells the toll, in terms of those crippled mentally and physically, those poisoned by the widespread spraying of toxic defoliants, and the laying of millions of anti-personnel mines that are still killing and maiming people in Indochina today.

Now a new president, Obama, like Johnson before him, is telling Americans that a war half a world away is “necessary for American security.” This is a ludicrous assertion on its face. If Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, and really hardly a country at all, is a threat to US national security, so is Malawi, Burundi and Fiji.

Let’s be rational for a moment. The Taliban, whatever their irrational Islamic fanaticism and their misogyny, have no interest in America, other than to drive our troops out of their country. When they were in charge in Kabul back in 2001, they had their hands full just trying to hang on in the face of the war lords and drug kingpins who held (and still hold) sway in various parts of the country, and when they eventually win and drive the US and its NATO allies out of Afghanistan, they will have their hands full again, just clinging to power.

American national security is not to the slightest degree threatened by the Taliban.

Okay, so back in 2001 there was a gang of Arabs in Afghanistan which had since 1990, at least, expressed some hostility towards the US, but that crew, after all, had been set up by the CIA in the first place, and anyway, by 2002 it had been largely shattered and driven out of Afghanistan, and into Pakistan and parts unknown.

The current Afghanistan War, which President Obama claims is so necessary to American security, is not against Al Qaeda though; it is against the Taliban, and it simply cannot be won, anymore than the US war against the Vietnamese could be won.

Today, as in the late 1960s, the Pentagon is telling the president that it needs more troops. There is a military imperative not to lose a war. No general or admiral wants to be the guy in charge when the jig is declared up, and the troops have to be brought home as losers. And so they are asking for more and more troops and weapons, in hopes of hanging on until they get get cashiered out.

Obama, like Johnson before him, will buy into this criminal policy, because he too doesn’t want to “lose” a war before he leaves office.

That should be pretty scary, since I’m sure Obama is hoping that he will be in office not just through 2012, but through 2016. That’s a long time to keep escalating a hopeless and pointless conflict, just to avoid having to say it was a mistake in the first place.

But lest you say that it cannot happen, recall that the first US advisers went to Vietnam in 1959, the big escalation began in 1964, and the US didn’t leave until 1974. That’s 15 years of war and ten years of major warfare.

Because the Bush/Cheney administration was always more interested in invading Iraq than in invading Afghanistan, and pulled out many troops from the latter country in late 2002 to ship them to Iraq, the Afghan War has escalated more slowly than the Vietnam War did. But I’d say that today we are about where we were in Vietnam at the start of 1965. That is, the big lie, and the big escalation in the fighting, are both just getting going.

If the American people don’t rise up and demand an end to this thing right now, we could be in for another 8-10 years of brutal and bloody warfare, and in the end, the United States is, once again, going to lose.

Survey finds numbers up for rare ibis

phnom penh post, THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2009 15:03 LAURA SNOOK

Photo by: BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONAL

Several critically endangered white-shouldered ibis roost in Stung Treng province.

THE first nationwide count of critically endangered white-shouldered Ibis has revealed their numbers have remained higher than previously thought.

Hugh Wright, a PhD student at the University of East Anglia in Britain, has been leading the research. He said: "This is the first time we have achieved a reliable minimum figure for the population size of white-shouldered Ibis in Cambodia. The recent count means the population is almost certainly larger than the IUCN estimate of 50 to 249 mature individuals; however, there is a good chance that the population is even larger than 310 because we expect to find more roost sites and count more birds."

The precise reasons for the population's decline in the past few decades remains something of a mystery, according to BirdLife International, which backed the study. This breeding season, the research team will examine why nests fail and how they can best be protected.