Cambodia’s major demining group will cut two-thirds of its staff at its Phnom Penh headquarters by mid-February and redeploy them to the provinces as part of a package of major reforms, the agency’s director- general said Wednesday.
Sixty of CMAC’s 170 Phnom Penh employees will be sent to a “forward headquarters” being set up now in Battambang, Khem Sophoan said. Another 50 will go to an expanded training center at Kompong Chhnang, he said.
The move is the centerpiece of a package of reforms, outlined in a recent white paper and aimed at allaying donors’ concerns. Donors suspended funding and demanded a sweeping overhaul of operations at CMAC after evidence of major fraud and mismanagement surfaced last year. Foreign donors supply more than 90 percent of CMAC funds.
The relocation is geared at getting support staff closer to high-priority demining operations and, more broadly, to decentralize what donors had criticized as a top-heavy organization, Khem Sophoan said. Another move that has impressed observers is the recruitment of new department directors to fill posts that have been vacant for several months. Critics have argued that a competent management team needs to be in place before CMAC’s efficiency can be improved.
Two posts—finance and operations—were filled in the last month, in what Australian Ambassador Malcolm Leader described as “a serious and transparent recruitment process.”
The third, the directorship of the new human resources department, will be readvertised next week after a recent search failed to find a qualified person.
CMAC senior management reshuffled after its director-general, Sam Sotha, was sacked in August amid allegations of widespread corrupt practices. Among them was “contract demining,” in which CMAC diverted mine clearance from high-priority areas to private land holdings.
“This jolt may have been salutary because it will allow the organization to take off again on the right foot,” Leader said. “Everyone will have to keep up the pressure to maintain the momentum.”
Critics said the white paper does not give deadlines for reforms or offer specifics on how to carry them out.
“There have been many, many words and presentations and bits of paper,” a CMAC adviser said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. “I’ve yet to see any signs that they can implement them.”
The CMAC plan also calls for a “major reduction” in the number of short-term personnel.
Khem Sophoan said he estimated a 10-percent overall cut over the course of this year. CMAC’s staff now stands at more than 3000. A time frame for the reductions has not been set, he said.
Nor has the agency come up with a new system for reviewing workers’ productivity—a key element in the plans. An existing system “often doesn’t get done or isn’t done very well,” another senior adviser admitted.
