Sun Chanthol, the Minister of Public Works and Transport, said last week that Hanshin Engineering and Construction Company, a Korean firm that won the contract to improve National Road 21, violated the contract with the government by hiring a subcontractor to do the job.

“The subcontractor must be approved by the MPWT [Ministry of Public Works and Transport] based on the contract,” he said. “As of today, that subcontractor has not been approved and secondly, a subcontractor cannot do more than 50 percent. One hundred percent by one subcontractor is wrong, violating the contract.

“And that, we have to report to the EDCF [Korea Economic Development Cooperation Fund] and report to the Korean ambassador so they know it is in violation,” added Mr. Chanthol in a video clip posted to his ministry’s Facebook page.

He said that if no action was taken against this violation, EDCF could stop giving loans to the Kingdom, and it would be a big loss to the Cambodian people.

Mr. Chanthol also said his ministry was aware of the low quality of road construction all over the country, which was due to many factors including corruption, low contract costs and floods during the rainy season.

To tackle road quality issues, the ministry has hired a private company to regularly inspect road construction sites and report back to the ministry, which will in turn, send a technical team to inspect if the roads are being poorly constructed.

As for National Road 21, Mr. Chanthol said his ministry had performed many road quality tests. The results indicate the road has not been constructed to standards mentioned in the contract, but since the road is not yet finished the company should have more time to make improvements.

“We did a lot of tests to see whether the road is qualified as mentioned in the contract or not. After the tests, we found out that the road is of poor quality,” said the minister...