Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


What's Worse, Hunger or COVID: Phnom Penh Street Vendors Ask Themselves Daily

Aun Chhengpor

   PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - The plight during the COVID pandemic of Khim Ha,
   a 46-year-old Phnom Penh food cart vendor and member of the [1]Khmer
   Krom ethnic group -- which is frequently involved in such small
   businesses -- shows how the pandemic has hit the earnings of the city's
   informal workers.
   Before the pandemic hit, every day she wheeled her food cart to a busy
   corner in the Chaktomuk commune, or neighborhood, the capital's
   hustling central commercial and political quarter home to banks,
   companies, and branded fashion stores, to sell fried noodles with
   vegetables, eggs, and beef, chicken or pork breakfasts.
   Over the past 10 months, as Phnom Penh's businesses and offices have
   been closed by the coronavirus, her income has been cut by half because
   the workers she once fed no longer have jobs.
   "My sales had been down for months," she told VOA Khmer Thursday, "It's
   been dropping -- drop and drop."

   Now, a recent outbreak in Phnom Penh and a few of the country's
   provinces might be the death knell for her small and struggling
   business.

   Cambodia said November 28 it had identified six new cases of COVID-19
   but could not contact-trace the source of the infections. In the last
   two weeks, the number of cases has grown to 40, and the government has
   ordered people to stay home as much as possible, leaving shopping malls
   and local markets largely empty.

   This left Khim Ha facing a choice to either stay home and lose all
   income or risk infection while continuing to sell fried noodles.

   "I am also scared deep inside because I can be infected with the virus
   any time, but I keep protecting myself with masks," Khim Ha said.

   She said the risk has not paid off because few people are venturing
   out, let alone eating street vendor food. To make things worse, she
   usually claims a spot for her noodle cart on a section of Preah
   Sihanouk Boulevard, with its well-known shops and now, a COVID-19
   cluster of at least seven cases.

   Each day she sets up, Khim Ha joins other street vendors, ride-hailing
   tuk-tuk drivers and all the other self-employed or informal workers
   with little option but to continue working through the current
   outbreak.

   There is no clear estimate of the number of informal workers in
   Cambodia. The International Labor Organization [2]estimates more than
   60% of Cambodians contribute to the informal economy. This does not
   include the workers employed in agriculture, which is about 33% of the
   country's overall workforce and largely informal.

   These workers have little or none of the social protections workers in
   the formal sector enjoy. Tourism and garment industry workers who lost
   their jobs during the pandemic have received small monthly payments as
   factories and hotels have closed in the last nine months.
   The only way informal workers can receive state benefits is to qualify
   as "IDPoor," a state- and donor-funded program that recently started
   cash transfers of $30 to $40 a month to more than 600,000 poor
   Cambodian households, or close to 2.4 million people. Before the
   pandemic, the only IDPoor benefit was free health care.

References

   1. https://www.voacambodia.com/a/advocacy-group-urges-khmer-krom-to-fight-for-self-determination-in-vietnam/4895992.html
   2. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_230721.pdf

.