Urban Innovations: Partnership for a Cleaner City: Community-based Environmental Improvements in Phnom Penh

Abstract

Street vendors, small-scale traders, and motorbike taxi drivers are the bulk of Phnom Penh’s working poor. Further, female heads of households working at low-income service jobs accounts for a large share of Phnom Penh’s working poor. For the most part, members of this hardworking population are prevented from acquiring higher-income, formal-sector employment because they lack basic education as they cannot afford schooling; and have no access to facilities for appropriate personal hygiene and, as a result, are generally in poor health. Sickness, accidents, and involuntary unemployment further reduce their income levels. As a result, roughly 176,000 people—equivalent to one in seven of all Phnom Penh residents—contend with adverse living conditions, such as houses that flood regularly and are consequently accessible only by boat or makeshift footbridges. More importantly, flooding causes storm water to enter the city’s sewerage system and clog the drains. This, in turn, releases waterborne diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera into the flood waters, increasing the risk of contact with disease-causing bacteria.