Roads crucial for border: official
SENIOR Cambodian officials recently inspected road construction in areas bordering Vietnam and Laos, saying it was carried out to support the government’s policy of building a frontier of peace, friendship, cooperation and sustainable development.
Senior minister in charge of border affairs Var Kimhong and Koy Pisey – deputy head of the permanent secretariat of the National Authority for Border Affairs – were accompanied by deputy commander of the engineering brigade Khvan Seam as they inspected the construction of ring roads on the borders.
The inspection took five days and was carried across Stung Treng, Ratanakkiri, Mondulkiri and Kratie provinces.
On April 30, Kimhong and the working group visited some of the military units stationed at the borders and inspected the construction of the Cambodia-Vietnam border ring road in Tbong Khmum, Svay Rieng and Prey Veng provinces.
According to the report by the Engineering Brigade, Kimhong and his working group inspected the Cambodia-Vietnam border ring road stretch built by Unit 718, road-bridge construction unit 715, road construction unit 713, artillery construction unit 74 and unit 72 of the engineering brigade spread across the three provinces.
Kimhong praised the five units for overcoming all obstacles and difficulties they
faced in their efforts to build the border ring road and the connecting roads in the area in the three border provinces.
He said this demonstrated that the “principle of building national defence belongs to everyone – including the work of building and erecting border posts with roads as a complement to them. All of this work is indispensable”.
Pisey stated that establishment of the road network in the border area would be a main determining factor in the development of other sectors later on.
She further said that the construction of the border posts to demarcate the border between the two countries was
important in order to establish the exact contours of the international border as stable and irreversible because that would bring lasting peace and create opportunities for the two nations to live in harmony and for its people to cooperate in the development of their respective countries.
“Wherever the border road is built, there are people who have settled down and there are many strategic villages and communes where there are a lot of people living there and there is steady development – including opening up border gates with neighbouring countries,” she said.
Seam reminded the commanders, deputy commanders
and officials, deputies and soldiers of the five units to focus on building the roads and all other infrastructure in accordance with the technical standards set forth by the government so that all of their work would be of high quality and aesthetically pleasing and done with proper respect for safety procedures.
“The construction of a road network in the border area has already been completed. This is the only way to effectively build capacity in border communities while we strengthen and maintain peace, friendship, cooperation and development with our friends across the border in a way that is stable and long-lived,” he said.