National Rail Project on Hold ‘Indefinitely’
Work on a $143 million donor project to renovate the country’s creaking railway system, which is already over budget and years behind schedule, is now indefinitely postponed due to a lack of funds, with more than 300 km of rail still to be laid, a transportation official said Monday. Ly Borin, director of the Transportation Ministry’s railway department, said work on the railway rehabilitation project was suspended in mid-2013 and that there is no prospect of extra funds from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) or the Australian government, the project’s two main financiers. … A year after the government dropped TSO, the French firm contracted to carry out the bulk of the work on the track upgrades and repairs, Mr. Borin said it too had yet to be replaced. When work on the railroad began in 2007, the ADB said it hoped to have the tracks fully operational by 2009. Trains have started running along the 256-km southern line between Phnom Penh and the seaside port of Sihanoukville. But of the 383-km northern line from Phnom Penh to the Thai border at Poipet City, the Transport Ministry’s Mr. Borin said that only 42 km of rail had been completed when the last of the money dried up and work shut down last year. … Human rights groups have long said that the 4,000 families losing land to the railroad rehabilitation project were either getting far too little compensation or being sent to woefully under-equipped relocation sites and wracking up heavy debts in the process. After repeatedly deflecting blame and offering only piecemeal solutions, the ADB last week admitted for the first time that it was failing to adequately protect the families. …
Phorn Bopha
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/national-rail-project-on-hold-indefinitely-51323/
