Worse off than before
In May of 2010, just four days after their family was resettled in Battambang province, two children, accompanied by their sister-in-law, walked to a pond. Stories differ as to why they were there. Rights groups say they went to bathe and collect water. Police claim they were collecting snails. … “While at the pond, one of the children fell into distress and the other went to his rescue,” describe the authors of a scathing, 169-page report that exposes the failures of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to ensure the just resettlement of families affected by the rehabilitation of the country’s national railway. … These stories are some of the most devastating examples highlighted in the report by the ADB’s internal watchdog, the Compliance Review Panel (CRP), which picks apart in encyclopaedic detail how the development bank, which advised the government on the railway project, got it wrong for thousands of Cambodia’s poorest families. The report, dated January 14, is marked “for official use only”. … While exhaustive, the thrust of the report can be summarised in one sentence: On the whole, the CRP says, most of the families affected by resettlement are worse off now than before the move. More than 4,000 families have been displaced by the project, according to rights groups. For the ADB, whose role it was to ensure the government carried out the resettlement appropriately, the report is a stark revelation that one of the country’s largest development partners failed to uphold its own safeguards. … The CRP investigation found that compensation for those relocated was not enough, homes were undervalued and not even scant support was given to cover income lost as part of the transition. It also revealed that many families went into debt trying to get their lives back on track, and many continue to go without work. …
Daniel de Carteret
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/worse
