When he faced Khmer Rouge guerillas in Cambodia’s army more than 30 years ago Yem Ravy enjoyed regular meals and regular pay unlike today as a tuk-tuk driver.

By Ten Soksreinith | VOA Khmer | July 6, 2018
អានអត្ថបទ​នេះជាភាសាខ្មែរ

Samdach Techo Hun Sen Park, Phnom Penh Every morning, at 5 a.m., Yem Ravy wakes in a hammock suspended from the roof of his tuk-tuk, walks to a nearby public restroom to wash his face, then returns to his parking spot opposite Cambodia’s largest casino.

As the sun crests the horizon and hits the gold-tinted windows of NagaWorld Hotel & Entertainment Complex, the 48-year-old former soldier settles in for another day of waiting.

Yem Ravy greets his passengers with a smile, but frowns when he thinks of the $2,000 he borrowed to purchase his three-wheeled taxi.

“Every day, I am doing the best I can to support my family and pay off the loan,” he says. Yem Ravy used his house as collateral for the two-year loan. He’s on the hook to pay $2,400 with interest. If he fails to make three consecutive payments, the family will be homeless.

On a good day, Yem Ravy makes $10. On most, he makes $3. Once a month, he travels 30 miles to his home village in neighboring Takeo province to make a payment on the loan at a rural branch of the Prasac Microfinance Institution.

While in Takeo, Yem Ravy also spends time with his wife and 12-year-old daughter beneath the bamboo-thatched roof of their wooden home.

His wife’s silk-weaving business nets barely enough to cover the cost of food. His grown sons, 21 and 25, work at a Phnom Penh restaurant while studying Korean. They hope to find good jobs in South Korea and avoid the cyclical debt that traps so many poor Cambodians.

Cambodia’s economy, propelled by textile exports and tourism, is one of the fastest growing in the world, and poverty rates fell rapidly between 2007 and 2014, from 47.8 percent of the population to 13.5 percent, according the World Bank.

But this trend has slowed, and 4.5 million Cambodians teeter just above the global poverty line of $1.90 per day, “vulnerable to falling back into poverty when exposed to economic and other external shocks,” according to the bank.

“The loss of just 1,200 riel (about $0.30) per day in income would throw an estimated 3 million Cambodians back into poverty, doubling the poverty rate to 40 percent,” Neak Samsen, a poverty analyst for the bank, wrote in 2014.

‘Going backward’

Like Yem Ravy, millions of Cambodians have left their homes in the countryside to seek work in Phnom Penh and provincial capitals like Siem Reap and Sihanoukville. Others, like Yem Ravy’s sons, believe their only hope lies outside the country.

“Development that is too fast doesn’t really benefit people in rural communities, only big companies and their networks — those with a lot of money,” Yem Ravy says, pointing out the high-rise condominiums that have transformed the capital’s skyline in recent years.

At street level, the changes have been no less dramatic. Parked luxury cars – Range Rovers, BMWs, even the occasional Rolls-Royce or Lamborghini – clog Phnom Penh’s narrow streets. Their occupants emerge in designer outfits only to disappear into a Starbucks, a Burger King or one of the dozens of other Western franchises hoping to cash in Cambodia’s economic boom. At the corner where Yem Ravy parks his tuk-tuk, a Japanese restaurant advertises an all-you-can-eat soup feast for $20.

Through the front doors of NagaWorld, there’s a steady stream of Cambodian and Chinese gamblers, the high-rollers jetted into the city by private plane and whisked from the airport to the tables in a Mercedes limousine.

Last year, gamblers at the casino bet $21.1 billion — a sum greater than the value of Cambodia’s gross domestic product in 2016, estimated at $20.02 billion.

Yem Ravy cannot imagine the lifestyle of wealthy Cambodians and he has no illusions about his chances of riding the wave of development.

“People like me, we don’t really benefit. We are going backward,” he says.

“Those who were never in debt are now in debt,” he adds. “Some people take out loans to buy luxurious things because they are influenced by some rich people.”

Indeed, income inequality is high in Cambodia. The wealthiest 10 percent of Cambodians consume 1.5 times as much as the poorest 40 percent, according to the Asian Development Bank’s latest poverty analysis.

“The rich become richer and the poor become poorer. This is the reality,” Yem Ravy says.

‘Full of fear’

Facing seemingly insurmountable debt, Yem Ravy remembers his time in the army with a measure of wistfulness.

“It was a different time,” he says. “At least I had a place to stay and a bed to sleep in at night.”

Yem Ravy was just a boy when the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country in 1975. His parents perished under the ultra-Maoist regime, along with at least 1.7 million other Cambodians.

His three older siblings survived to be raised by an uncle in Battambang. After he reached the seventh grade, the cost of sending Yem Ravy to school – not to mention the 13-kilometer (8-mile) round trip on foot – became untenable. Obstacles like Yem Ravy faced are among the reasons why less than half of Cambodia’s population has even a lower-secondary education, according to the World Bank.

In 1986, Yem Ravy volunteered for the army. He was 17. Stationed first in northern Battambang province and later in the Phnom Voar mountains in the south – the site of fierce fighting between government forces and Khmer Rouge guerillas – he lived in a state of constant worry.

“Anyone could die at any time,” he recalls.

But he had a stable salary, and when he left the army in the late 1990s, he was given a small plot of land in his village in Takeo. There, he grew rice, helping his neighbors transplant their seedlings in exchange for the use of their cows for plowing.

Yem Ravy moved to Phnom Penh about five years ago, hoping to raise his family’s standard of living.

“I came here to make money, even if I have to sleep on the street,” he says. Today, “I’m scared, sleeping on the street. But what can I do?.”

‘One rotten fish spoils all’

Yem Ravy has never been passionate about politics, but recent events have caused him to become disenchanted with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

“I don’t discriminate against any political party,” he says, “as long as they are not corrupt and serve the people.”

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) came close to defeating the CPP in the 2013 national election and authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen has taken extreme measures to prevent a similar upset in the upcoming July vote.

Already the world’s longest-serving prime minister, Hun Sen has vowed to rule for another 10 years and quash any threat to stability and continued development, including peaceful “color revolution.”

Opposition leaders and human rights advocates have been arrested or forced into exile en masse since the Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the opposition party in November and the palpable political tension is scaring away tourists – his highest-paying customers, Yem Ravy says.

“It affects us a lot. Before, there were a lot of tourists who used our services. Since the dissolution of the [opposition] party, the number of tourists is down,” he adds.

Yem Ravy voted for the CPP in 2013, believing the party to have the best interests of the people at heart.

“In the past, the government had a saying: ‘The people’s needs are the priority of the government.’ In reality, the needs of the government are the priority,” he says.

Corruption is the real enemy, Yem Ravy says, adding that local-level CPP officials seem to be more responsive to their constituents than the party’s powerful lawmakers in Phnom Penh.

Asked how he might vote in July, Yem Ravy declined to say, instead offering a popular Cambodian aphorism: “One rotten fish spoils all in the basket.”