During the commune election campaign on Saturday in the capital Phnom Penh, Kem Sokha, president of the opposition party CNRP, told CNRP's supporters if the CNRP get a chance to win the general election in 2018, and if he will be prime minister, Mr. Sokha will dissolve the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), because this ministry spends too much money even for the construction of a small road.
As an alternative, Mr. Sokha prefers directly provide half a million dollars to commune council as annual development budget in order for them to build roads, irrigation systems, wells, and other necessary infrastructures by themselves , independently from higher authority.
"For a small road, they [commune council] have to go [to the ministry] how many time? and spend how much money for the trip? Is the bid transparent?" Mr. Sokha said.
In response, Sous Kung, secretary of state at the MoRD, in the same day, wrote on his Facebook page that by law, his ministry plays a crucial role in the supervision and/or coordination of major development projects that require the participation of many communes at once such as the construction of road crossing many communes. According to Mr. Kung, the MoRD also plays a very important role in term of providing technical support to commune council.
Nevertheless, an anonymous political analyst has agreed with Mr. Sokha on the fact that the existence of the MoRD is not really necessary, because many functions carried out by the MoRD could be carried out by the Ministry of Public Work and Transport (MPWT) and/or by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF).
For example, all development projects concerning road construction could be supervised and/or coordinated by the MPWT, while development projects regarding agriculture and fishery could be supervised and/or coordinated by the MAF.
Relating to the role of the ministries in the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that the administrative processes within the Cambidian public sector are too complex, and the functions of the agencies and/or ministries unclear to the point where, sometime these functions are overlapping. As a result of this overlap, people often don’t know to which institution they have to visit to do paperwork.
With the help from the European Community, especially France, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has been setting up policies to decentralize its central power. The main goal of this reform is to yield some decision-making power to local government.
While the policy of decentralization seems to be successful in South Korea, the ADB pointed out that in Cambodia the regulatory framework of this decentralized system still lacks the definition of roles and responsibilities of the local administrations.
As for the ADB, the reform of the public administration is the right thing to do, because it could lead to a better development and/or expansion of the private sector; the corrupt and inefficient practices could be also eliminated. If successful, this reform will help to reduce poverty by increasing local economic development that, in turn, will create jobs for local people.
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