Evicted railway families await ADB’s help
In 2011, Oeun Phirun took out a $450 loan from the Asian Development Bank, using half to buy a used motorbike and spending the rest on a small flock of ducks and chickens he hoped to raise. His family and about 1,000 others have been evicted from their homes along the country’s long-forgotten train tracks to make room for a $143 million railway rehabilitation project funded mostly by the ADB. … About 100 of those families, including Mr. Phirun’s, were moved from central Phnom Penh to Trapaing Anhchanh, a remote resettlement site on the far outskirts of town in Pur Senchey district, an hour away from the city center. Microloans to help evictees buy poultry were part of the ADB’s efforts to help make up for the homes and jobs the families were losing because of its project. But Mr. Phirun’s ducks and chickens all died within a year, and he still owes the bank $450, plus interest. … In February, the ADB finally admitted that it bore much of the blame for the mounting debt the evictees were taking on. Last month, the bank finished drafting an action plan to provide the families with fairer compensation, and is due to make it public, as soon as it reaches the ADB’s board of directors for approval. … Before it started drafting its action plan for the families, the ADB released a damning report by its compliance review panel laying out the many ways the bank had ignored its own safeguard policies over the course of the railroad resettlement. The panel called for a total “mind shift” in the way the bank conceived of the families being evicted by its projects. It also made a few broad recommendations that the ADB board quickly approved, including a “deficit payment scheme” to properly compensate the families. But instead of an ADB grant, the recommendations suggested covering the extra payouts—projected to cost up to $4 million—with a loan to the Cambodian government. The recommendations also called for a plan to help families pay down the loans they have taken on since their evictions—loans that the ADB admits it pushed on the families. But the recommendations suggested offering the families new loans with better interest rates, rather than forgiving the debt altogether. … The bank has admitted that paying off the families quickly, as the review panel recommends, will still leave some without the money they deserve. …
Zsombor Peter and Phorn Bopha
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/evicted-railway-families-await-adbs-help-56128/
