KAMPONG
CHAM
-
Batheay
District
- Tang
Krasang Commune
- Tomnup
Commune
Mrs.
Srey Rorn
Kradas
Kha Village
Mrs.
Srey Rorn is thirty-eight-years-old. There are 12 people
in her family and only five people can work. She is a widow.
She
has 0.5 Ha of land and she has two buffaloes. They grow
rice and she does most of the work like ploughing, transplanting.
If rice production is good, she can get 500Kg of rice paddy
but this amount cannot last for the whole year. Her family
lack food for three months.
She
also sells labour in the rice fields, transplanting, harvesting
in other province.
She
borrowed 200,000R from a moneylender at 10% monthly interest
rate and “I promised to pay back in a year. To borrow
that amount of money I have to put my land title as collateral”.
She has a plan to repay 400,000R by this year and she hopes
to have good production from her dry rice growing.
This
year her kids got sick very often with illnesses like dengue
fever or malaria. She cannot afford to build a latrine because
she has no money and also the flood comes every year. Her
family water supply is from a pond about 300 m from her
house.
She
dares not to borrow money from any organization “because
the repayment is difficult and strict and I have to comply
with their conditions at the exact time”.
Mrs.
Toeung
Prayuk
Village
Ming
Toeung is the widow 57yrs old she has 8 children in the
family (6 boys and 2 girls). All boys have gone to school
but not the girls. There are 3 people in the family who
can earn the income. They work as wage labor in the plantation
company and can earn 3,000riels per day with their own meals.
In his family has got 40A x 100m size of land and each year
he could get 12 sacks of paddy. The fertilizer that he uses
for the rice is mixed with chemical and natural (cow shit)
fertilizer. In these 12 sacks of paddy he can feed his family
for only 3 months if it is lucky. The rest of the months
in a year he find wage labor, dig potatoes. He has borrowed
someone in the village 3 chi of gold with 1 hun of gold
interest (10 hun of gold is equal 1 chi and 1 chi is around
$36 or $37). She owed the gold-lender for 8 years but now
she paid everything. She had to sell a pair of buffalo to
pay the loan. Both interest and principle is 1 damloeung
(1 damloueng is equal 10 chi). After that she borrowed again
another 2.5 chi with collateral 35A x 100m of rice land
and she also owe to the private clinic another 0.5 chi.
He
daughter went to to Preh Vihea province to work as wage
labor so that she can earn money to pay back for the medical
expenses. Now the living condition of the family is deprived
because she lost her land (the private company took the
land). The local authority forced the villagers have a thumb
print or signing on the paper and claim back the land that
the private company took but after the signing they turn
to say that this is the agreement that people in this village
had agreed upon to sell the land to the company.
