A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
OF The CAMBODIA DAILY
A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT |
|
OF The CAMBODIA DAILY |
Deminers Feel Professional Pride
One’s a qualified veterinarian who couldn’t find a job when he graduated from university, another is a rice farmer’s daughter who supports her entire family and a third is an ex-soldier who lost a leg to a land mine.
They’re all deminers now and although this wasn’t the career any of them expected, they take professional pride in the work they do and take personal pride in having steady, good-paying employment.
| Veterinarian Chhim Sonear is 26 and was still
looking for work in his field when he heard the Mines Advisory Group office in Kompong
Speu was interviewing. He was swift to respond and joined a crowd of 361 applicants vying
for only 37 positions. He was happy to be one of 39 chosen for training. Five of the positions were specifically set aside for women and that gave 25-year-old Oung Channy her chance. She worked on her family’s rice farm, helping her brother to support their aged parents. |
 |
Eam Sovann, now 38, was a soldier fighting rebel forces when a land mine explosion cost him half of one leg. Although he received training intended to qualify him for a civilian job as an electrician, he never managed to find employment. Then three years ago he heard that MAG was hiring and by policy reserved some slots for amputees. Eam Sovann seized the opportunity with enthusiasm.
 |
These three deminers are representative of the workforce of
234 that MAG fields at seven points in Cambodia, along with around 100 support and
advisory staff. In screening applicants for demining jobs, Regional Coordinator Pheap Mono says MAG’s selection committee looks for people "of gentlemanly character." They must be willing and able to master the all-important Standard Operating Procedure and follow the rules as if their lives depend on them, which indeed they may. Many will be former soldiers or police officers. They must be literate and in good health and if they are amputees, their injury must only be to one leg and that below the knee. But the most impressive qualification will be if the committee decides an applicant will act "in a Cambodian way." This seemingly vague term is readily understood to mean being steady, responsible and self-disciplined. And deminers need one other qualification: They must have no claim to the land they are clearing. This last point is an important one to guard against landowners using the resources of MAG for personal advantage when the organization’s mandate is to benefit communities, not individuals. |
Selected trainees spend six weeks at CMAC’s facility in Kompong Chhnang learning how to locate and identify land-mines and unexploded ordnance, then a further week in a MAG training course on the use of safety equipment.
Then it’s out to the field to put their new knowledge into practice.
At a MAG site in Chambak Commune, Phnom Sruoch District, veterinarian Chhim Sonear is part of a demining team that is helping Lutheran World Service develop an area adjacent to Kiriom National Park for homes and subsistence farming.
Chhim Sonear talks honestly about the hazards of his job. "I am not afraid," he says, "because we have the standard operating procedure to follow and this keeps us from getting injured." He also takes reassurance from the helmet with visor and ballistic vest that he wears as he probes for buried explosives.
But, he admits with a small smile, "My parents worry—it is natural for parents to worry." Oung Channy never expected to get hired when she applied for a demining job at MAG. "I had no demining skills, I had been a high-school student and a rice farmer and I just stayed in my village," she says with a shy smile. But she was able to benefit from the policy that ensures women will be considered for demining and her family situation—her parents are too old to work and there is no outside income coming into the home—was also taken into account.
| Now, Oung Channy has joined the slender ranks of Cambodian
women whose professional qualifications set them alongside men—and for the same wage
rates as men. "Rice farmers just live from day to day," said Oung Channy.
"But I have a good income and I give my salary to my parents and we are able to save
it for the future." Eam Sovann has a lined face and eyes that have seen too much suffering. For years, he was a government soldier, fighting rebels and enduring dangerous and uncomfortable conditions.In May 1990, as he was fighting in the Battambang area, Eam Sovann stepped on a land mine and became yet another military casualty of buried explosives. Later, he was fitted with a prosthesis and trained for a civilian job as an electrician—but there were no jobs for electricians in the Kompong Speu area where he lived. But three years ago, the bleakness of Eam Sovann’s life lifted when he was accepted for deminer training. Now, he has a steady job, three little children and his self-respect is flowering. And, like the other members of his team, Eam Sovann is sure of one thing – when his current contract expires, he intends to sign for another hitch. |
|
(Story & Photos) By Elizabeth Wright
