Ministry told to address high cost, low-quality roads and bridges

The public works and transport sector has been told to address the longstanding issue of many roads and bridges having been built and repaired at high cost but to low quality standards.
Speaking at the national meeting of the sector that ended on Friday in Vientiane, Deputy Prime Minister Somdy Duangdy said members of the public have complained about the issue as well as the slow pace of construction. 
“There have not been complete measures to fully address the issue,” he told the two-day meeting.
There are several causes behind the issue, according to Mr Somdy, who is also Minister of Finance.
They included the fact that many roads and bridges were constructed in the form of Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) – a contracting arrangement where the EPC contractor is responsible for all activities from design, procurement, construction, commissioning and handover of the project to the end-user or owner.

Another cause is that construction of some projects had begun while designs were still being drawn up, which meant the plans had not yet been completed and approved by the relevant departments but construction took place nevertheless. 
Most of these projects were developed with prior investment by the private sector with the government repaying contractors at a later date.
In many cases, the relevant state departments failed to pay money on time in accordance with the agreed deadline due to budget constraints. This contributed to the private companies facing financial difficulty thereby slowing outstanding construction work.
The private contractors said they have to factor in bank loan interest charges into the project costs following slow payment by the government thereby driving total investment costs higher. 
However, inspections found that the investment costs of many projects were unreasonably high, Minister of Public Works and Transport, Dr Bounchanh Sinthavong told local media last week ahead of the meeting.
Some projects were priced at as high as US$1.8 million per one kilometre for a seven-metre-wide and two-layer asphalt road, while some were at US$1.5 million.  These exceeded the standard unit price which is somewhere between US$600,000 and US$750,000 per km.
The government could save more than 3.5 trillion kip (almost US$419 million) from the overpriced projects following the inspections.
Highlighting one of the reasons causing the low quality of roads and bridges at the nationwide meeting, Mr Somdy said project management and implementation did not strictly follow construction procedures.
In this regard, he stated that the construction of many projects was carried out without hiring consulting firms to monitor quality.
“There is no experiment on the quality of construction materials,” he told the meeting.
The DPM added that the scrutiny and selection of contractors were not properly done. Some selected contractors who offered the lowest cost were found to have insufficiently qualified staff members as well as inadequate machinery and finance.
Mr Somdy told the meeting to take action on overweight trucks running on roads, saying that the issue has caused damage to roads and bridges earlier than expected.
Issues also emerged that local residents living along national roads have encroached upon areas reserved for road expansion and residential building construction did not follow town planning guidelines. The DPM called for action to address the problems.
Mr Somdy praised the public works and transport sector for a number of achievements it has made over the past years, especially the inspections it carried out that could save the government a huge amount of money from overpriced projects.

By Souksakhone Vaenkeo
(Latest Update April 1, 2019)