The explosion of an underground sand pipe caused a 20-meter length of asphalt to bulge and crack open along National Road 2 Thursday morning, blocking traffic for more than an hour near the Australian Center for Education.
Just a few years after U.N. trade data showed evidence of a massive discrepancy in sand exports to Singapore, the Cambodian government has quietly resumed selling the commodity overseas.
Phnom Penh officials said they will begin reconstructing a road that collapsed into the Tonle Sap River in Chroy Changva district earlier this year, another instance of the riverbank collapsing due to erosion.
Reporters out on the Bassac river in a hired fishing boat counted 43 barges in total at various stages of the sand dredging process in two hours in one afternoon last week.
Riverbanks at a stream near the Bassac river in Takhmao city collapsed over the weekend, damaging a Khmer-Chinese temple and pavement near the provincial city hall.
A Phnom Penh fisher who was flung from his boat after a crash with a sand barge on Sunday, destroying his boat and motor, said he has received $1,500 in compensation, though he never learned the company’s name.
A fisherman is waiting for sand-dredging company officials to respond after his boat and home was severely damaged in a crash with one of the barges hauling new land for Phnom Penh’s developments.
The Mines and Energy Ministry is seeking bids to dredge sand from more than 2,000 hectares along the coasts of Koh Kong and Preah Sihanouk provinces, saying the work is needed to “restore waterways.”
A new sand dredging operation has commenced on the Tonle Bassac river in Phnom Penh within the past month, a local official said, with more than 90 companies now dredging rivers and streams in the country, according to the Mines and Energy Ministry.
A pipe installed under a Phnom Penh pagoda burst on Tuesday while moving dredged sand from barges on the Tonle Bassac river to landfill on Choeng Ek lake, with a pagoda representative saying City Hall had pushed for the pipe to pass through their grounds despite their reluctance.
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