Japan-built institute to pioneer national elderly care standards

Khmer Times
Mom Kunthear

Japan is building a centre to train Cambodian workers to care for the elderly. Supplied

The Social Affairs Ministry has requested a Japanese company’s help in building a centre to train Cambodians on how to take care of the elderly.

Social Affairs Minister Vong Sauth, who met with Kondo Yoshio, director of Procast Co Ltd on Monday at the ministry, said Cambodia did not have a state centre to train people how to take care of its senior citizens.

The ministry needed to create a centre to help with the rising number of old people, he added.

“We want to ask your company, which is skilled in taking care of elderly people, to cooperate on the construction of a centre located in Phnom Penh’s Por Senchey district and to also train our people to become skilled in taking care of the elderly,” said Mr Sauth.

Mr Sauth said Cambodia did not have the ability to build centres in many places like in Japan, but would begin with a training centre in Phnom Penh and expand to provinces that needed it.

“I ask your company to help us train our people on how to take care of elderly people as soon as you can,” he said, adding that experts from both countries would study procedures and formulate a memorandum of understanding.

Mr Yoshio agreed to cooperate with the Social Affairs Ministry to train Cambodians and help the centre set the standard for taking care of the elderly in the kingdom.

“We will create an institute to take care of the elderly and take the skills used in the centre to help Cambodians have good health and long lives like the elderly in Japan,” he said.

“We will try to find partners and organisations to help with this.”

Last month, Labour Minister Ith Samheng met with Mr Yoshio to discuss building a centre to train Cambodian nurses how to take care of the elderly before they are sent to work in Japan.

Mr Yoshio said about $3 million was being spent to build the centre, which is due to open in April.

According to Agence Kampuchea Presse yesterday, there will be nearly two million elderly people in Cambodia by 2030, while the total population will increase to about 18.1 million.

In 2015, there were 1.11 million people aged 60 and up, or about seven percent of a total population of 15.3 million.