Cambodian farmers have adopted a new shtick to ward off the novel coronavirus, farmers now place a scarecrow in a floral-print shirt, armed with a stick and with a plastic pot for a head in front of their rural homes to avert the threat of coronavirus.

Commonly referred to as “Ting Mong” in Khmer, these uniquely crafted scarecrows can be spotted along the rural areas of the country, that are generally hit hard by diseases like dengue or water-borne diarrhoea.

Farmer Sok Chany says, “I’ve set up the Ting Mong to prevent the coronavirus from threatening my family.”

The 45-year-old has fixed two Ting Mong’s in front of her wooden stilt home in the province of Kampong Chan, some 110 kilometres from country capital Phnom Penh.

One of the scarecrows have a camo-green outfit and stands with a stick propped like a rifle across its hay-stuffed chest.

“It is our ancient superstition to set up Ting Mongs when there are dangerous diseases or to avert evil,” Mong told AFP.

The Ting-Mongs ward off evil spirits wishing to bring harm to an unsuspecting family by spreading disease.

While in the village of Trapeang Sla, an effigy is tied to the gate of every home and has been constructed through painstaking effort.

Some of the effigies are elaborately dressed in military uniforms while others sport floral pyjamas, while a few are hastily completed and are just stuffed bags with sunglasses on the head.

Farmer Ton Pheang dresses his Ting Mong in his old clothes and the scarecrow adorns a helmet for its head.

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“This is my second one — the first one broke,” the 55-year-old said. The farmer stated that his scarecrow has been standing guard under sun and rain since April when the outbreak started spreading rapidly across Southeast Asia.

“We’ve been fine since the outbreak,” Ton Pheag tells AFP. “I’ll continue to leave it up as long as COVID still exists.”

Cambodia appears to have escaped the brunt of the pandemic, with just 283 infections and no deaths, but skeptics say the low toll is due to inadequate testing.