Border Ring Road Construction Team Vows to Complete Before Rainy Season
By Reported by The Cambodia Daily, Translated by Khmer Post USA
April 4, 2025
The working group for the management of the border infrastructure construction fund is committed to completing the construction of the Cambodian border ring road in Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri provinces before the upcoming rainy season, while the construction of the border ring road is nearly 40% complete.
According to a press release from the working group on the management of border infrastructure funds, published on April 1, from December 2024 to the end of March 2025, the construction of the border ring road with Laos and Vietnam has achieved approximately 39.92% of the plan, of which Mondulkiri province has achieved a length of 44.90 kilometers, equivalent to 42.45%, and Ratanakiri province has achieved a length of 30.30 kilometers, equivalent to 34.26%.
The same press release stated that the clearance of mines and unexploded ordnance has been completed on an area of nearly 3 million square meters (2,752,500 square meters), or 44% of the total area planned to be cleared of more than 6 million square meters (6,250,000 square meters).
The same source claims that regarding the progress of the border road construction process in the past 5 months, the Cambodian Border Guard has shown work on clearing forests to find the first route, clearing wide roads to find the road axis, clearing valleys and streams, and lowering mountain slopes and canal construction, including road construction and mountain wall excavation, paving with crushed stone, etc.
The team claims that they are continuing to promote the clearance of unexploded ordnance, continuing to accelerate the construction of roads during the dry season, ensuring that they meet technical standards, quality, and weather resistance, and continuing to accelerate the pace of construction and how to complete it before the heavy rains of the upcoming rainy season.
Social watchdogs say that the Hun clan government’s border ring road construction fund is not necessarily a border ring road construction fund, but could simply be a plan to build a ring road to protect the Hun clan’s power.
The same source claims that it is possible that when the road is completed, the Hun family government will distribute land to tens of thousands of Vietnamese families living on the water to live on land and give them land ownership like Cambodian citizens. Because this is a lesson that Hun Sen’s old government learned. It has already been successfully implemented in Kampong Chhnang province.
The working group was established through a decree signed by Hun Sen on October 30, 2024, following intense conflict between Khmer and Khmer which led the Cambodian government to announce its withdrawal from the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Cooperation (CLV-DTA) on September 20, 2024.
After withdrawing, the Cambodian head of government announced the establishment of a border infrastructure construction fund on August 22, 2024, with a total budget of nearly $27 million.
