The two bank representatives stood for several hours outside Dara’s house. They came from Amret, one of Cambodia’s microfinance institutions, to collect the monthly payment that Dara was late with.
“When they saw my 16-year-old daughter coming out of the house, one of them suggested that I sell her to a KTV bar to pay off the loan,” says Dara, whose name has been changed to protect his anonymity.
The problems began last year, when Dara, who is a small-scale farmer in Ratanakiri in northeastern Cambodia, took out a so-called microloan of $2,400 to buy herbicides and other farming products. Amret, which up until now has been partly owned by several major state-owned international development institutions, including British International Investment, quickly granted the loan, Dara says.
But the cassava harvest didn’t turn out the way Dara had hoped and he was left with debt he couldn’t pay. Under pressure from Amret, he sold a piece of land to pay off half of the loan. But soon he fell behind on payments again. That was when the bank representatives came up with their proposal.
“Noone in our village would sell their child. It’s unheard of,” Dara says.
