Beschreibung der Beschaffung
Effective poverty alleviation requires the targeted orientation of development activities towards the poor. In response, the Cambodian Ministry of Planning has developed the ‘Identification of Poor Households’ (IDPOOR) mechanism, with support from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. It identifies poor and vulnerable households so that they can access benefits such as social transfers, healthcare and other targeted services.
Before the project began its work, there was no standardised, universally recognised and nationally applied procedure for recognising poor households in Cambodia. This meant that poor households were unable to assert their rights to basic social services, such as free medical treatment. The Cambodian Government implements a standardised procedure for identifying poor households nationwide. Governmental and non-governmental institutions as well as development partners use the generated data for targeted poverty alleviation interventions.
To assess poverty via IDPOOR, villagers elect representatives amongst themselves to interview households using standardised poverty criteria. The villagers then discuss the results openly before finalising a list of poor households for each village. This procedure is run recurrently throughout the country to provide up-to-date targeting data to the social sectors. This mechanism is on the way of being phased out, to be replaced instead by an on-demand mechanism where citizens can come forward to be assessed. If deemed, eligible, the household will then be issued the same equity card which makes them eligible for the same social services and poverty alleviation interventions.
The project strengthens the capacity of IDPOOR staff to coordinate and implement the identification process in cooperation with local authorities and implementers. GIZ also supports the Cambodian Ministry of Planning in improving its database system as well as further developing the poverty assessment procedure. After an initial focus on rural areas, coverage of urban areas began in 2016. GIZ implements this support to IDPOOR on behalf of both the German and Australian governments.
The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 resulted in the Government of Cambodia introducing bold economic and social support mechanisms, with the Covid-19 Cash Transfer program for households having the equity card being the center piece of the different interventions.
Based on the experience from the 2020 Covid-19 Cash Transfer program, the government has now decided to abolish the different data collection and assessment rounds, solely relying instead on the on-demand mechanism of the IDPoor program. OD-IDPoor work processes have been matured in the last year ever since it was launched nationwide; it was put to vigorous testing during the Covid-19 Cash Transfer program where many households which fell into despair due to the Covid-19 economic shock requested for the Equity Card via the OD-IDPoor mechanism. The on demand-IDPoor system has proven to be effective.
Due to this policy change, some parts of the IT system requires modification. The GIZ project supporting MoP is therefore seeking IT expertise to carry out these modifications.