The contractor in charge of rebuilding
Cambodia’s national railway has been cutting corners on the health and safety
of its workers, according to a report published yesterday by the Asian
Development Bank.
TSO-AS
& Nawarath, a French-Thai joint venture, was reportedly found to have
grossly violated health and safety requirements at workers’ camps along both
the northern and southern rail lines.
The
report details, among other infractions, the deep pits and quarries left behind
by TSO workers as they dig soil and stone for use in other areas of a
construction site.
Those
pits along the section of the project located between Sisophan and Poipet,
“were very dangerous … especially to children, [who] can fall into the pit and
die”, the report states.
The
pits had steep slopes, to a depth of more than four metres, according to the
report, and yet TSO had made no attempt to take preventative measures.
Safety scandals
In late
2010, two children – a brother and sister aged 9 and 13 respectively – drowned
while fetching water from a pond on a Battambang resettlement site for families
who previously lived along the railway, according to media reports.
The
Cambodian government-sanctioned site was reported to be without fresh running
water.
Japanese
engineering firm Nippon Koei Co Ltd, the supervising consultant hired by the
Cambodian government to oversee the rehabilitation project, conducted its
investigation in December after TSO-AS & Nawarath failed to submit a
monthly environmental report in November.
The
report was filed to the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation and the ADB
early this year.
The
allegations against TSO come amid scandal over the Kingdom’s national railway.
Questioning transparency
Australian
logistics firm Toll Group, which holds a 30-year operational lease for the rail
with Royal Group of Companies, last week informed the Cambodian government of
its intention to suspend service as a result of significant delays in TSO’s
reconstruction, the Post reported.
Site
monitors found that the southern line between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville port
was 51.9 per cent complete as of December.
The
northern line, which is broken into two sections, was only 3 per cent complete
from Phnom Penh to Sisophon and 35.4 per cent complete from Sisophon to Poipet,
on the Thai border.
Insiders
have said that contractual issues between TSO and the Cambodian government have
been a main reason for the delays.
TSO
country head for Cambodia Claude Petit, however, when reached early yesterday
by phone shrugged off that speculation.
“In a
project, there are always contractual issues,” he said. “I won’t say anything
on that.”
Petit
also rejected claims that the delays were out of proportion with what he said
was a complex project, claiming there were “a lot of reasons” for the broken
deadlines.
He
declined to offer specifics of those reasons, however, saying only “it seems to
be a problem for Toll”.
When
asked if Toll’s withdrawal as a result of the setbacks would prompt the
project’s partners to call into question the integrity of TSO’s work, Petit
said “let them do it”.
Petit
could not be reached yesterday evening for comment on the Nippon Koei report.
Illuminating hazards
Nippon
Koei’s report highlights a number of health and safety hazards present at TSO’s
sites, namely insufficient sanitation facilities for workers and a lack of
protective equipment.
The
“Kampot station [has an] existing toilet in [an] old building, but TSO did not
allow the workers to use it, the [wash closet] in station building was locked,”
the report states.
TSO
does not provide clean water to many of the camps, and workers either have to
buy their own clean water for bathing and drinking, or use the unsanitary water
sources available to them, the monitoring team found during their December
inspections.
The
report states that workers along the southern line had not been provided with
safety gloves or masks, but also infrequently wore the safety helmets and boots
they had been issued to them.
Philip
Bulmer, Nippon Koei deputy project manager for the southern line, declined to
answer questions yesterday on what he said was a “confidential” report.
ADB
officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Bridget
Di Certo
The
Phnom Penh Post
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