Abstract:
The purpose of this research on the role of community leaders in rural development, a case study of Serysophon district, Banteaymeanchey province, Kingdom of Cambodia, was to study the role and behavior of community leaders who delegate the power to commune-district council and to study the peoples hope and satisfaction for grass-roots leaders who offer an authority to the community in Banteaymeanchey province, Combodia. Sample size of 189 used for the research it two governors such provincial governor as district governor, 107 local leaders, and 80 respondents. The research instruments used for compiling and gathering a data were the questionnaire used to gather the data from the community leaders and designed or constructed by a researcher with rating scale of 5, and an interview as a tool designed to make the interview with respondents and high ranking official. SPSS for windows was used to analyze the data in order to calculate percentage, mean and standard deviation. For qualitative approach, data the researcher obtained from the respondents and high-ranking officials evaluation of the local authoritys duties and responsibilities according to their answers was analyzed on the basic of descriptive.
The results of the study were as follows :
1. General information from the community leaders
It found that 84.10 % of most leaders were male and 55.11 % of them ranged from the age of 41 to 55. 61.70 % of them only had the primary school education. 38.33 %, with regard to their work experience, had the experience less than five years.
2. The role of community leaders in rural development
It, according to their perception, reported that one, in terms of grass-roots work implementation, produced average results : reasons that make the work implementation of the local leaders have yet to yield good results, were sue to other factors for instance, commune-district council was a just-established typical institution. On the one hand, these members were from other different parties, so joined cooperation didnt avert the nepotism. Another most useful thing was that commune-district member has suffered from the lack of experience and capacities of grass-roots administration, the above-mentioned issue depended on the law of commune-district election introduced on literate only. Thats why ; every training course on other work didnt go smoothly yet.
To address these issues, Government of Combodia should find a mean how to help make commune-district council become a powerful institution in a bid to obtain the work from the government who delegates the power to the grass-roots level, for instance, the government should not only organize and further offer education of skills in the local administration to the local leaders, but also arranged for study tour in any successful commune of their work implementation with a view to exchanging knowledge and experience of the role better. For the community leaders, they should hold a public forum all together by inviting institutions concerned and organizations, where both have engaged in activities in the community, and people to discuss and exchange an opinion to identify the way to tackle other problems together. Moreover, leaders of provincial level to village level must make a commitment to do the work to build up the confidence between the government and people. In the process of other work, one should help join the hand and make a decision even how small and big the project is, everybody must bear this burden all together. On the one hand, village-commune civil servants capacity must also be strengthened and grass-roots networking will be set up. More importantly, monks, old people and retirees living in the community should be invited to contribute to rural development.
3. Peoples hope and satisfaction
It presented that most people, through the performance of the community leaders who had pursued the policy on delegating the power to the locality, were satisfied with the performance because it urged them to have broad-mined vision and to acquire the knowledge from other education related to health and plant growing, where the education or training was conducted by other organizations and institutions in accordance with to the leaders requirement. The work performance according to the policy on power delegation towards the grass-roots level assumed the key role in helping teach people to share and exchange an idea, and to bear a responsibility of other projects as well as to offer a friendly atmosphere. However, the performance of the community leaders had yet to win peoples hope too high. On the certain causes and effects, the community administration has stayed on having the strong conection, especially for work implementation of the area leaders ; it had not been presented to people until now they are still unsure exactly that to what extent this project will be implemented. Fund for the rural development granted by the government is still not enough to meet the community needs, and the allocated fund remains slow that not only exaggerates impacts on project implementation, but also not to meet expected objectives.
To this end, the community leaders must join a hand for the sack of common interests. Also, every project should be showed to people in a series of projects. The government should add to the found for each project approved as soon as possible to meet the community needs.