Poverty, Unemployment and Education Issues in Cambodia

Poverty, Unemployment and Education Issues in Cambodia

Cambodia GDP Annual Growth Rate is around 7% accordingly from 2014 until now. Despite the high growth of Cambodia in term of economy, Cambodia is still considered as one of the poorest countries in the world. There many weaknesses that Cambodia has faced so far, and three of which are poverty, unemployment and education. 

Cited in Holly Vs Poverty in Cambodia

Poverty remains a concerned issue in Cambodia. Although the GDP per capital of Cambodia is US $1,094.6 (World Bank, 2014), around three millions of Cambodian people are under the poverty line while other 8 million people almost fall into the poverty category (The World bank, 2016). This approximate 17.7 % of poverty rate, some people make less than one US dollar a day, and others who are above poverty line, garment workers for example, could make only US $3 per day while they are considered out of poverty (Daube, 2014). However, with this wage, life is so struggle to live in this high price-products society. Furthermore, this poverty situation is also a source effecting the social welfare and security. 

The poverty is one of consequences from the unemployment. Although Cambodia government claimes that the unemployment rate in Cambodia is low, the fact shows that a few number of Cambodian people are jobless and some 1 million people decide to work abroad including Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea. The World Data shows that unemployment rate in Cambodia is around to 0.30 percent in 2013. Although majority of people have jobs, in fact, they are hard to survive with the wage of US $140 in average. 

If we take a deeper look at root causes of the unemployment, education weakness is considered as one of many influential factors. Education in Cambodia have many rooms to be improved. Although recent reforms have taken, it is still weak comparing to that of neighboring countries. Moreover, it is also still weak to be applied to this current high-skilled demands in Cambodia market. There are lack in terms of vocational, professional and job-required skills training programs. Most workers with low wage are unskilled workers because they cannot access to the education and training programs.


In short, with these barriers and threats, some actions should be taken for improving of Cambodia development. Some humble suggestions would include the increasing of wage so that people can enjoy better welfare, the creation of economic incentive policies to attract more investors to invest so that many more people can work within country, and the training programs for people acquire skills for better productivity.

Note: This article is written for academic purposes only.

Department of International Studies (DIS)

Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL) 

Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP)

                                                   

Written by Uk Dararath

 

References

Daube, E. (2014, March 31). HUFFPOST IMPACT. Retrieved from Life on $3 a Day: Garment Workers and Cambodia’s Struggle for Human Rights: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-daube/life-on-3-a-day-garment-w_b_4638311.html

The World bank. (2016, April). Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/cambodia/overview

World Bank. (2014). Retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD