Original report from Phnom Penh
22 October 2007
The government is seeking private investors to help upgrade the Royal Railways with a $50 million Asia Development Bank loan, officials said Friday.
The loan would be used to pay investors for upgrading a link from Sihanoukville, on the coast, to Phnom Penh to Poipet, on the Thai border.
The initiative stems from a directive signed in September opening investment for private bidding in public projects, where concession owners would have the right to build, maintain, repair and develop Cambodia's railway.
Following decades of civil war and neglect, nearly 650 kilometers of rail have become unsafe and unreliable, hobbling the country's economic growth.
An upgrade to Cambodia's railway system would increase the transport of heavy goods, providing big returns in the economy, Ministry of Public Work and Transport undersecretary Touch Chan Kosal told VOA Khmer.
"We will upgrade our railways in the interest of our national economy," he said. "The railway can provide transportation for heavy goods, to avoid damage to national highways."
Cambodia has in recent years pushed to improve its roadways, but those projects are often undermined by overloaded trucks that leave highways in disrepair.
As investment companies look for transportation service to feed the country's development, the railway could be more in demand.
Royal Railways business director Rith Doeun said the transport of cement and other goods by rail over the last three years reached up to 30,000 tons per month.
"What I think is that there might be many goods that people would like to transport by rail, especially containers that can be transported from Sihanoukville, and most of those goods could be carried by train," he said. "But presently we need locomotives and train cars, and the railways are old."
The loan would be used to pay investors for upgrading a link from Sihanoukville, on the coast, to Phnom Penh to Poipet, on the Thai border.
The initiative stems from a directive signed in September opening investment for private bidding in public projects, where concession owners would have the right to build, maintain, repair and develop Cambodia's railway.
Following decades of civil war and neglect, nearly 650 kilometers of rail have become unsafe and unreliable, hobbling the country's economic growth.
An upgrade to Cambodia's railway system would increase the transport of heavy goods, providing big returns in the economy, Ministry of Public Work and Transport undersecretary Touch Chan Kosal told VOA Khmer.
"We will upgrade our railways in the interest of our national economy," he said. "The railway can provide transportation for heavy goods, to avoid damage to national highways."
Cambodia has in recent years pushed to improve its roadways, but those projects are often undermined by overloaded trucks that leave highways in disrepair.
As investment companies look for transportation service to feed the country's development, the railway could be more in demand.
Royal Railways business director Rith Doeun said the transport of cement and other goods by rail over the last three years reached up to 30,000 tons per month.
"What I think is that there might be many goods that people would like to transport by rail, especially containers that can be transported from Sihanoukville, and most of those goods could be carried by train," he said. "But presently we need locomotives and train cars, and the railways are old."
4 comments:
Damn, that is a risky business. There are many safety factor to consider. I would want to replace all the rotten wood that supported the iron rail. And it is very costly to rip out thing than to build from scratch. There lot of kilometers to cover, probably close to 400km. I don't think 50M USD is going to cover it.
Every fucken time I heard Cambodian government is looking for investors to do this to that and it is really sicken me to the heart because they are willing to spend million and million of dollars is trying to find the damn investors and even the fucken job is done and it is not even a guarantee that it will last for certain amount of time! By the way a proper build railway system should last at least 30 years!
Building a fucken railway system is something stupid Cambodian government should know how to do themselves and if not they should hire consultants which is way cheaper! And there are options which stupid Cambodian government can use to reduce cost by using dirt poor Cambodian workers provided with proper job training!
The construction of 650 kilometers Cambodian railway system ain't shit when comparing to the building of Panama Canal!
When Cambodian King builds Angkor Wat the biggest religious building in the world and did the King of Cambodia go around looking for investors too? Ahahahahahahhah!
Cambodian government is being condition to have the mentality of Vietcong slave and for being a slave which gave up all right to think for dirt poor Cambodian people who really a job!
By the way India has the best railway system in the world!
Yeah, but the problem with doing it yourself is you end up with too many employees on the pay rolls. And we don't want to lay them off after the project completed.
Anyway, one of the thing I hate about the train track is how it is fastened to the wood with wedged cast iron nail. It is a hell of a job to pull the damn nail out or hammering it in to fasten the iron rail. Also the problem with nail is that some of them will come loose here and there and you can't get a consistent grip on the iron rail uniformly. Thus, I would stop use that labor intensive and brutal fastened method. What I would do is to mass produce a large quantity of pressure treated wood chunk with embedded threaded nuts pressure fitted from the bottom. Then all I have to do is to delivered it to the site and bold down the iron rail giant wrench. This should result in a more reliable rail road track. I think it is worthed because I anticipated an increase usages of the railway year after year in to the far future as the economy continue to boom.
To 9:56 PM!
What you have mentioned is a fucken outdated way of doing things! Ahahah! Actually it is more highly automate to accomplish the task in the shortest time possible and of course to eliminate human errors! All parts are pre-made include the rails, rebar, and the tracks and all people have to do is to connect it together! The only labor that is intensive is the preparation of the foundation in laying the track and a lot of rebar are put in place and mix it with good quality cements and carefully pour in the concrete and make the surface even and the rest is just duplicating the same shit over and over without making mistake!
Wood is prone to be eaten by termite (chemically treated?) and it is tend to be rotten, crack, and dent, and splinter…
By the way it doesn't take a fucken rocket scientist to figure out how many employees are needed to do the damn project and the employer must be honest about the work condition and what to expect of the employees regarding rules and regulations in the work place and tell the employees truthfully about the length of the project and tell them about the salary and how they will get pay!
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