“It was a very difficult trip,” So Phorn, who lives in Chroy Svay commune in Koh Kong province said, recalling her experience.
The 26-year-old woman is expecting her second child, but this time she hopes her ride to give birth will be less arduous and time consuming. That is because the ferry service is no longer needed.
Crossing the 40-metre wide Kampong Sdam river is now made easy by a concrete bridge, which was built by the joint UNDP-European Union project “Strengthening Democratic and Decentralized Local Governance in Cambodia”.
For the 10,000 residents of Chroy Svay and Boeung Preav communes that are separated by the river, going about their daily lives has become less time-consuming after the bridge was opened in March 2011.
“It used to be very difficult without a bridge. I had to transfer goods several times from my cart to a boat and then from the boat to my cart before I could reach my house,” said Neng Chhun, 31-year-old father of six children. He runs a small grocery store at his home in Chroy Svay commune, but regularly travels to a market 17 kilometers away in the neighboring Boeung Preav commune, on the east side of the river, to get goods to replenish his stock. He said each journey used to take him “hours” to return home before the bridge was opened.
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The picture shows the wooden bridge at Kampong Sdam
river that existed before the new one was built.
The villagers were forced to take the boat to cross the
river because the wooden bridge was in a very poor
shape and too dangerous for them to walk on.
(UNDP)
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For the residents of Chroy Svay commune, the new bridge also means an end to their virtual isolation. The commune is located on the west side of the river. Further west of the commune is the sea. The commune does not have a hospital for the residents to access health service. To buy and trade goods, the residents have to travel to the neighboring Boeung Preav and Sre Ambel communes, 17 kilometers away on the east side of the river.
A wooden bridge existed before but it was quite dangerous even for pedestrians to walk on. Its platform was filled with holes since the wooden planks had rotted away. The whole structure was simply unstable. Motorists had to put their motorbikes on the ferry – which was made up of two boats joined together by a wooden platform – to cross the river for a one-way fee of 500 riel (about US$0.12). The amount is small but in a country where the poverty line is just about US$0.60 a day, it can be expensive for the villagers.
“It took long time to take the sick to the hospital or to take goods to the market. At night time, people with goods could not cross the bridge and some even fell down with their motor into the river. That was why the bridge was the highest demand by the people,” said Mr. Hay Sin, Chroy Svay commune chief.
Initially, he said there was nothing he could do since his office has very limited budget to work with. The UNDP/EU Inter-Commune Cooperation (ICC) fund, however, offered him a way to solve the problem.
The ICC is a local cooperation mechanism implemented in 12 provinces in Cambodia, including Koh Kong province, in southwestern Cambodia. It is a development approach assisting local councils to cooperate with each other in pooling ideas and money for any kind of development project that will offer the highest benefit to their respective residents.
In 2010, Hay Sin invited the chief of his neighboring commune Boeung Preav to pool money from their modest local budget and draw up a joint proposal to access funding from the ICC. Their scheme worked and they received US$40,000 from the ICC fund to build the bridge.
“As commune councils, we should not think only about our own communities. We can work together to bring benefits for all the people,” he said.
The new bridge has also opened traffic to cars in contrast to the past where all car drivers ended their journey at the river simple because there was no ferry big enough to take their vehicles across.
“Now there is no more boat to pay for crossing the river,” said So Phorn, who is expecting her second baby. She said she is glad that she can spend only about 30 minutes on the road to get to the hospital – thanks to the new bridge.
A motor truck crosses the newly built bridge Kampong Sdam in Koh Kong province.
(UNDP)
