The Phnom Penh Municipality is conducting interviews today and Thursday in the city’s first census of beggars and street people, officials said Tuesday.
Census takers will target street children and seek to address the migration of beggars from the countryside to the capital, said Khun Sear, municipal vice governor.
The information will eventually help determine the causes of homelessness and begging, and be used to develop strategies to keep people off the streets, he said.
“Street kids are at risk and are a vulnerable group that needs our help,” Khun Sear said, adding that their situation affects the entire country.
But street people and NGO workers said they were apprehensive about the project.
Begging at Wat Phnom, Leang Sokha, 67, said officials claiming to conduct interviews have arrested her in the past and that she feared being arrested again.
“There have been many people who have interviewed me, and promised to take me to a proper shelter to get skill training,” she said. “But I was sent back to my home province in Svay Rieng.”
Khun Sear said no one will be arrested during the interviews.
Friends International, the umbrella NGO that includes local organization Mith Samlanh/Friends, declined an invitation to participate in the project, saying the process seemed unclear and could compromise the organization’s mission.
“We discovered that they only wanted NGOs to give them the sites where people were,” said Sebastien Marot, international coordinator for Friends International. “They just wanted to use our network.”
He said the municipality did not give clear answers about how the census would be conducted or how the information would be used.
“If they decided to raid an area, we could be accused by people we are working with [of being] in league with the police,” he said. “We weren’t sure if it would backfire on our work.”
Naly Pilorge, director of local rights group Licadho, questioned the usefulness of the survey. “How can you take a census of street people if they are always mobile?” she said.
