Official set to share Covid success story

A SENIOR official at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation on September 5 led a delegation for a meeting of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in the Thai capital Bangkok.

Samheng Boros, the ministry’s secretary of state, will share the Kingdom’s experiences of assisting poor and vulnerable families in the fight against Covid-19.

Boros told The Post that the meeting, scheduled for September 6, will see participants from more than 50 countries.

“Because Cambodia has succeeded in assisting impoverished households affected by Covid-19, I was invited to the ESCAP meeting. I will address the meeting of a commission for social work development. More than 50 countries will be in attendance,” he said.

“I will share our experience of successfully assisting the vulnerable in the fight against Covid19. The Cambodian model was such a success that the world has much to learn from our efforts,” he added.

The ministry said that over two years, it has allocated more than $775.11 million from the state budget to provide cash payments to impoverished families during the pandemic. The ministry has implemented 26 cash assistance programmes from June 25, 2020 to August 24, 2022. The second payment of the 10th round will run from August 25 to September 24.

Families who have already been verified can go directly to wing counters to withdraw their payments without having to re-register with commune authorities. The programme has so far provided assistance to 689,657 households, of whom more than 250,000 were categorised as poor level I. Combined, the programme has aided more than 2.7 million individual family members.

Finance ministry secretary of state Phan Phalla said at the launch of an implementation evaluation report “cash assistance programme for poor and vulnerable people during the Covid-19 pandemic” in late July that the programme had provided a lot of positivity.

“This programme is an important part of the interventions put in place by the government in the spirit of proactivity and responsiveness in providing protection to poor and vulnerable families from the effects of the global pandemic,” he added.

He continued that the results of the assessment not only demonstrated the effectiveness and transparency of the programme’s implementation, but also highlighted the role of social assistance interventions that helped ease people’s livelihoods and stimulated economic growth.

In a recent press release, the National Social Protection Council of Cambodia said that the programme had helped prevent poor families from falling into food insecurity, debt, the sale of family assets, and eased household expenses, especially food, medicine, and children’s education.