The Identification of Poor Households Programme is led by the Ministry of Planning (MOP) in collaboration with the Department of Local Administration (DOLA) of the Ministry of Interior. The programme is supported by the Federal Republic of Germany, with technical assistance provided by German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

What is Identification of Poor Households? Why do we need it?
In Cambodia until recently, poverty-oriented development planning and service provision has not focused enough attention on targeting assistance to poor people. Where household targeting has been implemented, each institution has developed and applied its own procedures and criteria for identifying beneficiaries. This means that results are not comparable with each other, and are generally also not shared with other organisations and institutions.

Identification of poor households, according to the procedures used by the Ministry of Planning and partner organisations, seeks to determine which households are poor and the poverty level of these individual households in rural villages. The purpose of identification of individual households is to directly target services and development assistance to the poorest households in a village in order to help lift them out of poverty and to protect them from shocks (e.g. serious illness, crop failure) which may deepen their poverty.

The Identification of Poor Households data can also be used for calculating comparative poverty levels of villages. Service providers can use this data for targeting poorer communes or villages, and the poor households within those areas.

In Cambodia there are many potential uses for data on poor households, such as the provision of free or discounted medical services (e.g. through Health Equity Funds or Social Health Insurance), scholarships or other financial support to poor school pupils and students, rural development and agriculture-related services, allocation of social concession land to the poor, and many other uses. There is also potential for developing conditional or unconditional cash transfer programmes.

Where is Identification of Poor Households being conducted?
As of July 2008, identification of poor households using the national Procedures implemented by the MOP had been partially or fully conducted in a total of 5 provinces—Oddar Meanchey, Siem Reap, Kratie, Kompong Cham, and Prey Veng, and a total of 2128 villages. In 2009, MOP is likely to conduct IDPoor in Ponhea Krek and Memut ODs in Kompong Cham, as well as Kompot and Kompong Thom provinces. Other areas are also currently being considered for coverage, subject to sufficient funds.

In addition to the 5 provinces partially or fully covered by the MOP, Health Equity Fund Operators and their partners have been using the Procedures for Identification of Poor Households in a number of other areas, in the provinces of Kompong Cham, Banteay Meanchey, Battambang, Pursat, Kompong Chhnang, and Sihanoukville. There are also plans by partners to cover other areas in the near future.

All areas covered by the Ministry of Planning, as well as partner organisations, are areas in which Health Equity Funds (HEFs) are operating. Many of these areas have substantial numbers of other types of service providers as well.

Procedures and Questionnaire
A key emphasis of the IDPoor Programme has been to use identification procedures that maximise implementation by government structures and village representatives, in order to build local capacity and enhance sustainability. The procedures also involve a high degree of participation by and consultation with villagers themselves. This increases the transparency of the process and the accuracy of the results, and therefore the acceptability to local people and to data users.

The process for identification of poor households consists of seven steps, which are summarised below.

• Step 1: Establish and train the Planning and Budgeting Committee Representative Group (PBCRG) at the commune level
• Step 2: Establish and train Village Representative Groups (VRGs)
• Step 3: VRG compiles List of Households in the Village, conducts household interviews, considers special circumstances of households; and after a Commune Review Meeting, compiles and publicly displays the First Draft List of Poor Households in the village
• Step 4: VRG conducts Village Consultation Meeting on First Draft List of Poor Households, receives villager complaints, prepares and displays Final Draft List of Poor Households, and submits the List to the Commune Council
• Step 5: Commune Council reviews and approves Final List of Poor Households, sends data to Provincial Department of Planning; and distributes Equity Cards to poor households (after data entry and photography in Steps 6 and 7)
• Step 6: Provincial Department of Planning enters all data and household photos into Provincial Database of Poor Households
• Step 7: Photography of poor households
  

Currently, a standard questionnaire is used in all areas, regardless of whether the process is carried out by the Ministry of Planning or by partner organisations, in order to optimise comparability of the results of identification among households and among geographical regions (village, commune, district, province). The questionnaire consists of a set of commonsense proxy indicators for poverty, agreed by the national Working Group on Identification of Poor Households, which are mainly based on easily observable and verifiable assets, but also include a number of other issues such as dependency ratio, school attendance, crises or shocks, and household composition. Interviews are conducted by Village Representative Group members themselves, whose local knowledge makes it easier to verify whether respondents are accurately reporting their situation, as well as to assess the special circumstances of households.

You may download the current Procedures and the Questionnaire used by the MOP for identification of poor households below. Please note that these are currently being revised, and new versions will be available in September 2008.

IDPoor Procedures Manual 2007-12-04 KH FINAL without Questionnaire.pdf (976 KB)
IDPoor Procedures Manual 2007-12-04 ENG FINAL.pdf (762 KB)
IDPoor Questionnaire 2007-11-08 KH FINAL.pdf (117 KB)
IDPoor Questionnaire 2007-11-08 ENG FINAL.pdf (117 KB)

Guidelines for Partner Organisations
The procedures used by the MOP may need to be modified by organisations who wish to carry out identification of poor households. Guidelines for Partner Organisations to implement harmonised procedures for identification of poor households in rural areas have been developed to promote harmonisation of procedures and ensure that minimum requirements are met. These are provided below:

Guidelines for IDPoor Implementation by Partner Orgs 2008-07-14-FINAL Eng (188 KB)
Guidelines for IDPoor Implementation by Partner Orgs 2008-07-14-FINAL Kh (242 KB)

Database of Poor Households
A Database of Poor Households has been developed to support the implementation of identification of poor households, and to generate data for dissemination to service providers. This database was developed in Cambodia and is bilingual (Khmer and English). The database is designed so that data entry can be conducted on a distributed basis in different locations, and then consolidated at the national level. In areas covered by the MOP, the Provincial Departments of Planning do the data entry. The MOP also makes the database freely available to partner organisations to enable them to enter data in their own coverage areas. The intention is to consolidate data from areas covered by the MOP as well as by partner organisations, and make this data available to all interested service providers, in order to maximise the cost-effectiveness of data collection.

Looking Ahead
Currently, the MOP has limited resources and can therefore only conduct identification of poor households in selected areas of the country. Therefore, the MOP is cooperating with partner organisations in order to cover as many areas as possible, with a focus on areas in which Health Equity Funds are operating.

The MOP has the medium-term aim of being able to conduct identification of poor households in rural areas nationwide, and to carry out annual updates. However, in order to do this, the MOP will require additional resources. In 2009, it is planned to create a pooled fund to enable the government and various development partners to contribute to the costs of identification.

Another key objective of the MOP is to work closely with the Ministry of Interior to achieve the integration of identification of poor households as a routine task of Commune Councils and their support structures. Institutionalisation of this programme within these structures will promote its long-term sustainability, and the widespread use of data on poor households by commune councils as a tool for commune planning.

Database of Data Users
We are currently compiling a database of data users interested in receiving data on poor households. Please fill in the table below and mail to idpoor@online.com.kh

IDPoor_Data_Users_Table_2008-08-07.xls

Survey of Implementers and Stakeholders
We recently completed a Survey of Implementers and Stakeholders on Issues Relating to Identification of Poor Householders in the provinces of Kratie and Siem Reap. The report and the presentation are below:

Presentation-Survey of Implementers and Stakeholders (113 KB)
Report-Survey of Implementers and Stakeholders (326 KB ZIP file)

Further information about the IDPoor Programme may be obtained by reading the detailed Programme Description (see Documents panel below), or by contacting: