Reflection on Corruption in ABCD, Cambodia

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Reflection on corruption inABCD, Cambodia.

This is a very rough working draft.

Introduction

The ABCD project of Christian Outreach in Cambodia is unusual in its emphasis onchanging the thinking of the participants. It has now been working for 6 years towardsachieving its objectives. One of these objectives is the formation of a local NGO by thestaff in order to replicate the programme in the future. As the process of NGO formationwas gaining momentum,zambia the director and the management committee had beenformed, an issue of corruption came to the surface. An audit revealed that the majorityof the staff had received money and goods that they were not entitled to. In a few casesthis amounted to several thousand dollars. This issue has resulted in the dismissal ofsome staff and has provided an opportunity for reflection on empowerment and theprocesses of community development. This paper documents the thoughts andreflections of the author who was the architect of the programme and who continues tobe involved in the programme.

Background

In addition to the annual reports which comprehensively document the project, there isa project summary called Transformation by Wearing Hats (Tearfund Case Study 1996).The opening paragraphs of the Case Study are as follows:-

You cannot easily change the damage caused by the war, or caused by the systematic breaking of relationships, or the loss of dignity. You cannot easily reverse the situation "lack of food". You cannot easily change the damage done by the meetings held in fear, or the meetings at which people were harangued by propaganda. The mind is paralysed by such things so the way forward is slowly carefully

" Meas Nee, a Khmer.

"The rural communities of Cambodia are characterised by a fragile food productionsystem, often with inadequate water supply and a number of chronic health problems.This state of poverty and subsistence economic activity is perpetuated by a mentalityamongst both individuals and the various village communities which limits their ability tochange their environment.". ABCD 5 Year proposal opening statement.

"The Agriculture, Business and Community Development Programme (ABCD) startedin 1992 in the rural district of Prey Veng, Cambodia. The International NonGovernmental Organisation, Christian Outreach, funded in part by Tear Fund, started

the programme in response to invitations from the Government and local people.Despite its name ABCD does not emphasise physical change in agriculture andbusiness. It is focused on the transformation of the participants thinking. Theprogramme is based in three communes (22,000 people) and aims to animate changesin community awareness and respond to felt needs and problems in partnership withlocal communities, through the creation of an environment of change.

"One of the distinctive features of the programme is its emphasis on the localcommunities agenda. Its funding is constructed in such a way that it is not tied to anagenda created by an outside agency. Funding is flexible to follow the agenda set bythe people."

While the main objectives of the 7yr programme concern the villages and theirmovement towards a dynamic proactive community, one of the objectives was that thestaff would form a local NGO at the end of the programme. The process in the villagesleads to potentially sustainable development within the village. However, the resourcesof the village are limited and it seemed unreasonable to expect villagers to activelyreplicate the programme to new villages. There is some limited influence of proactivevillages on their near neighbours, but in order to achieve a planned replication of theprogramme it was decided that the staff might become a local NGO.

Ownership

Herein lies the first potential problem. The decision to include the formation of a locallybased organisation for replication in the project objectives was taken by the staff of theNorthern NGO with only very limited consultation. The five year proposal was written ata time when there were only two Khmer staff for ABCD, and so very limited discussionswere held with these two people. Thereafter it was a task of the expatriates to animatethe Khmer staff to some form of ownership of this objective. This of course is not thebest approach. The rest of the programme emphasises that people should be free toset their own agenda, not to be made to conform to a pre-set agenda. And yet thisobjective was pre-set and the staff have been asked to conform to it.

In institutional terms, the objective was left very broad. It describes a local organisation.At the time of writing the proposal it was not clear if such a thing as a Khmer NonGovernmental Organisation would be appropriate or even possible. Therefore theoptions ranged from a local NGO to perhaps a team within the District Government.The essence of the objective was that there would be a institutional structure that wouldfacilitate replication of the programme with Khmer ownership. Funding may well need tocome from external sources because replication is a social service, but that fundingcould be North/South aid or perhaps from within the Government budget.

As the programme draws to a close, it seems that a Khmer NGO is a feasible optionand the staff have been discussing and working towards this for a number of years. Inthe early years the subject was raised by the expatriates and some interest was shownby the Khmer staff. After a period of cooling, where the expatriates did not push theconcept, the Khmer staff approached the expatriates and asked about the details of theKhmer NGO. These were the first signs of true ownership. In the last two years detailed

discussions have been held by the staff to decide the form of the new institution, and todecide on its basic structure.Understandably there has been a range of ownership and understanding within the 26Khmer staff. The proposal logical framework has as an indicator of achievement that "5national staff undertaking management and animation in community meetings" and " anational organisational structure in place for replication". This was intended to implythat only 5 staff were really needed to have sufficient ownership of the new organisation.

Discussing ownership and corruption invillages

The programme has a budget of about 120,000 UK Pounds per year. Of this money,the majority of it is spent on staffing. The programme is predominantly animation and itsphysical benefits come from the self help responses of the villagers. Even so, about 15%of the finance is used to start revolving funds within the villages. And a further sum isused to facilitate experimentation and the formation of enterprises.Since the village development committees (VDCs) are handling resources on behalf ofthe village, the issue of corruption has been a constant discussion point. Socialaccountability is said to help the VDC be responsible. All meetings with the VDC aresuppose to be public and anyone in the village can attend. The VDCs have an annualworkshop at which they put up drawings of what is in the revolving fund and how it isgrowing. They are also animated to feed this information back to the villages in a fullvillage meeting.

In Cambodia, as in so many countries, it is very easy to impose an externally generatedagenda on rural people. Local government or an NGO can approach a village andsuggest a course of action that would improve the village. The project cycle oftenmeans that a proposal written by an albeit informed but external person has alreadydocumented what the donors money will be spent on. If the priorities of the villagecommunity are for school buildings, and the NGO proposal is for water supplies, theneither the water supply is put in regardless (so that the NGO can fulfil its quota) or thevillage have to approach another source of assistance (for the school). Even in creditschemes it is very easy for the scheme to be owned and policed by the external agency,and the villagers to merely be joining in with the NGO programme.In ABCD a priority is the emphasis on the villages agenda. We want to help with whatthey want to do. At the same time, villages have a general deference to the outsiderswhich makes them want to follow whatever the NGO wants to do. There needs to be agreat emphasis on ownership by the village. To do this ABCD had a strategy of non-policing at village level. The process was argued that if external people asked to seethe details of the credit fund, then there would be a perception that the credit fundbelonged to the agency and was merely "on loan" to the village. Accordingly, in order togenerate a sense of ownership by the village, ABCD staff were encouraged not to ask

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Category:	Research
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Upload Date:	01/12/2009
Copyright:	Attribution Non-commercial
Tags:	Government Cambodia Government-Asia Government Cambodia Government-Asia (fewer)

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