Ministry to warn Hanshin Engineering for faulty roads
MINISTER of Public Works and Transport Sun Chanthol will send a warning letter to South Korea’s Hanshin Engineering and Construction Co Ltd, which is responsible for building National Roads 2 and 22 from Phnom Penh to Takeo province after he found it to be behind schedule and having technical errors.
“I didn’t tell anyone that I had gone down to check National Roads 2 and 22 last Sunday except two of my technicians.
“Having checked it, we saw [the mistakes]. The company [Hanshin] which was entitled to build the roads from Phnom Penh to Takeo has only two pieces of machinery. No one has ever done the work on National Roads 2 and 22,” he said.
He said if he had not checked the roads, no one would have known about their inadequacies, and that when the company was asked about its lack of progress, it said the machinery operators were busy.
When Chanthol inspected some of Hanshin’s work with a specialised machine, he found that they were not built to the correct specifications.
“I will write a formal warning letter to the company and establish a timeline for it to fix the errors. If they fail to solve them, it will have a problem with the Ministry of Public Works and Transport,” he warned.
Chanthol reminded officials that previously, the company had been charged with building roads from Skun village in Cheung Prey district in Kampong Cham province, to Siem Reap.
He said these roads had also not been built correctly and the ministry had ordered them to be rebuilt.
He emphasised that any company which builds roads improperly will be required to rebuild them and referenced past examples, including the initially poor construction of National Road 21 from Takhmao town to Koh Thom district in Kandal province.
“But I don’t want to have it like that. I want those companies to build roads according to the technical standards.
“When roads are damaged, I repair them. I don’t want to make repairs on my roads.
Try to build them well following proper technical standards,” he said.
He also said the ministry had removed eight Hanshin technical inspectors because they had not inspected the roads properly.