Mon, 22 July 2013
The Phnom Penh Post
The
issue of civil servant salaries, a key talking point for the Cambodia
National Rescue Party during this election campaign, took centre stage
yesterday as representatives from five parties laid out their promises
for government employees.
Speaking
at a debate organised by Cambodia’s Independent Civil Servants
Association, representatives from the Cambodian Nationality Party, the
Republican Democracy Party, the Khmer Anti-Poverty Party, the Khmer
Economic Development Party and the CNRP all promised higher salaries for
those on the government payroll.
CNRP
candidate Son Chhay reiterated his party’s oft-repeated promise to
increase civil servant salaries to roughly $250 per month. “We will
increase salaries to at least one million riel for teachers and civil
servants,” he said. “We assure that we can completely do it.”
The opposition has long maintained that recouping revenue lost to corruption would be more than enough to fund such an increase.
The
smaller parties made similar promises, but Khmer Anti-Corruption Party
representative Chab Chan Dara proposed a slightly more novel funding
measure.
“We
have a clear policy for our party, and we have 12 millionaires who are
coming to help Cambodian people when our party wins,” he said, without
identifying the benefactors.
While
the ruling Cambodian People’s Party was conspicuously absent from
yesterday’s debate, CPP lawmaker Sok Eysan defended the government’s
treatment of civil servants at the filming of a debate last week.
“The
CPP cares about civil servants. That is why their salary has increased
continuously,” he said, while also maintaining that the government had
to spend within its means.
Ros
Vireak, a high school teacher in Kandal who attended yesterday’s
debate, said he had been convinced by the CNRP’s promise, and noted that
his salary would more than double should they win.
“I get [a little] more than 400,000 riel, or $100, per month,” Vireak said. “That is not enough for me to support my family.”
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