Youths heed city’s siren call
When 29-year-old store manager Srey Mom sent her mother in Takeo province some money to pay young people to help with the rice planting, her mother told her it was no use – the young people had abandoned the village to seek their fortunes in Phnom Penh. … It’s a familiar story in a city teeming with young rural immigrants, a new in-depth report into the unprecedented Cambodian migration trend shows. … According to the Cambodian Rural Urban Migration Report Project (CRUMP), undertaken by the Ministry of Planning and United Nations Population Fund Cambodia, young people from the provinces are flooding into the capital for work and education opportunities, creating a sometimes detrimental chain reaction for villages back home. … As well as facing a labour shortage on farms, more parents are also raising their grandchildren. Of the eight per cent of workers with children living “elsewhere”, the majority leave their children with their parents. …
