The Train People of Sihanoukville: Rebuilding Cambodia’s Railways
The first train in 14 years to carry passengers to Sihanoukville, a city on Cambodia’s southern coast, gently rolls out of Phnom Penh’s art deco station.
Coinciding with 2016’s Khmer New Year in April, it’s the start of a week-long trial to gauge demand for a more regular service. I’ll travel the same route in a few days’ time, and so now join the rest of the crowd watching even something like tickets being checked with an air of excitement. Media crews jostle to interview a politician with a wolf like grin hovering in a car doorway, while a wild dog slips down onto the tracks, seemingly oblivious to the tons of metal sliding forward. Passengers wave from the windows as the latecomers jog down the platform, grinning nervously, relieved to have made it, and a long, triumphant blast of the horn signals the railway’s return.
Cambodia’s trains had a promising start: constructed by French colonists in the 30s, they received international investment from Australia, West Germany and China in the 50s and 60s to complete the southern line to the coast.
The Khmer Rouge quickly halted any further progress – no trains ran from 1975 to 1980 and large sections of track were destroyed – and after a steady decline the lines were closed in 2009. However, that same year Cambodia’s Royal Group was granted a joint 30-year concession to operate and maintain the railway.
The total reconstruction cost was estimated at USD 143 million, with funding from the Asian Development Bank and Australia topped up by the Cambodian government. Despite this investment the project soon ran into difficulties: mismanagement and poor weather led to delays and work was temporarily halted in 2011. More seriously, some families relocated during construction were inadequately compensated, a fact admitted to in a 2014 Asian Development Bank report. In some cases forced to live without electricity, water and sanitation, many were also left in crippling debt and made homeless after selling their land just to survive.
In 2015, a joint assessment of the report produced by local NGOs showed the Asian Development Bank was only partially compliant with five of its own recommendations and non-compliant with the remaining measure. Arguably the most important short-term remedy for families, the compensation deficit was estimated at USD 3-4 million. Those affected were faced with “take-it-or-leave-it” offers of additional compensation as low as USD 4, without meaningful opportunity to appeal. Even for a modest one-bedroom home, the average monthly rent in the capital is USD 270.
In 2013 the southern line was completed and freight began to move again between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville.
From an initial monthly average of 50 containers, Royal Railway was moving around 2,000-2,500 in 2016; even during New Year, generally less productive as the nation celebrates, the estimate was 2,600 containers. The railway’s success is the country’s success: fewer trucks on the roads will relieve congestion, reduce pollution and could potentially lower the number of road traffic accidents, one of Cambodia’s leading causes of death; and more efficient and reliable transport will improve the economy and open up new trading possibilities.
Though largely unexplored, there has been recent international interest in Cambodia’s potential mineral resources, especially gold; in order to bring these materials to the coast and borders for export, the railways seem like the obvious choice. Given recent history the impact could be huge, and the call of progress is often louder than those affected by it.
The sunny yellow and royal blue carriages chug away around the bend.
I speak to John Guiry, CEO of Royal Railway, and he stresses to me what, or rather who, this train is for: “That’s what today is really about: it’s for the Cambodian people”.
The question is: people on which side of the tracks?
I’m up at five again for the seven o’clock train, but this time I’m getting on it. I’d spoken to a moto taxi driver the day before and was supposed to meet him at six, more than enough time to get to Phnom Penh station.
I assume it will work out, more so because he’d asked several times if I was sure that I would be there. By six thirty when he hasn’t shown up, I’m frantically waving at any tuk-tuk I see, hoping that the traffic isn’t already starting to back up and that the driver puts his foot down. As we weave through the empty streets I realise that I won’t be late and start looking forward to the train and miles of clear track winding to the sea.
At the station it’s as I hoped: a holiday atmosphere. This is the penultimate train of the week-long passenger experiment, the last one being my return journey to Phnom Penh the following morning. I will probably see most of the same people the next day, and the connection that we share is a little deeper. We don’t have to rush things, just a glance and a smile here and there; we have time.
It’s a long journey so people have packed everything they need for eight hours. Plates, knives, forks, cups, glasses, pillows, books, cards...
I think of the seaside holidays in the United Kingdom 50 years ago that I never had, coastal towns withering, and wonder what this line could do for Cambodia.
The train picks up what little speed it has as it leaves the station. The communities living by the tracks start to blur, fragments of faces, flickering vignettes of lives stretching out, full and complex but only ever guessed at, the horn blares and we are so close to people who insist on standing and watching they have to hold their ears against the noise, pushing through them, running them over if they get in the way, always the horn wailing, almost constantly, children running out to stare and jump and wave, spooked animals rearing at the iron horse, some simply staring passive and unbelieving as if in a dream; pagodas begin to grow suddenly through the trees, and finally there is space.
The Cambodian man I’m sitting next to is friendly, so in between comfortable silences and dozes we chat idly.
The whole landscape gently undulates but he then points to small range of hills, Phnom Voar. In the mid-to-late 70s there were several killing fields and two secret police prison camps here; in 1994, the Khmer Rouge took over 100 hostages from a train like this one, killing eight. Looking at the cast of characters around us the chaos and terror of those times seems as distant as its green and red slopes are now, muted and quizzical as to why our gazes rest on them until they slide away behind the glass.
The planned stop on the route takes us to Takéo Ra railway station, around 70km outside Phnom Penh. There is a gaggle of vendors and stalls waiting, ready to sell snacks, drinks and the notoriously scented durian fruit. There is a genuine market-like excitement, a mild frenzy of bartering, weighing and paying; parents buy perhaps more than they normally would to keep children quiet and themselves sane. For a rural community like this, regular trains would bring a welcome income boost for food, education and healthcare. As we move off the people cheer and wave, fists full of bank notes, and I see the potential for good that the railway can have.
We approach Sihanoukville. Life trackside is once again smeared by speed into Impressionist figures and shapes. Through the howl of the horn, what the train could mean for them is equally unclear.
“Things are different from when we came to live here in 1995”, remembers Ms. Seetjin.
She sells prahok, a fermented fish paste integral to Cambodian cuisine (and an acquired taste). “The railway is made of metal instead of wood and it’s much more crowded. It’s a risky life for our 10 children, we have to stop them running across the tracks and getting hit by trains”. Fortunately there have been no injuries in this community, straddling the track at the end of the line, but they have heard of accidents in other places. Boys lazily kick a football in the afternoon heat, sandals for goal posts and long strips of steel marking the length of the pitch; a young girl perches on a rail, waist height if she were standing. Clothes dry on a rack tied to a sign that reads “FOULING POINT”, train speak for where tracks converge and there is a risk of rail cars colliding.
As the railways expand — passenger trains now run regularly to Sihanoukville, work continues on lines to Poipet north west of the capital and Phnom Penh has an airport shuttle — collision with the thousands of communities that live along them throughout Cambodia is inevitable. The trick is balancing development with sustainable projects that consider, involve and adequately compensate those whose homes and livelihoods are affected.
Everyone I speak to here recognises the potential benefits to Sihanoukville, and Cambodia more widely.
Additional business for locals, like taxi drivers, fewer traffic accidents in town and an increase in trade revenue that the government can invest in infrastructure and public services. At the same time, though they thought about it, no one is clear on what expansion means for them in the long term except for a vague notion of what compensation might look like.
“We think for sure we will have to move but worry we will not get enough compensation. We are happy to [leave], but just want what’s fair”, says Mr. Mao, a moto taxi driver. Land and location are more of a priority than money for most: many in this community came from other provinces for the job opportunities this port city offered after they could not support themselves with subsistence farming alone.
What was certain was that if they were asked to leave to make way for development they would have very little choice — and no idea where they would be relocated. “It’s a risky life but we like to live here. Compensation is the main thing: as long as we are ok with where we are moved it’s fine”.
Since 2010, Ee Sarom has been helping urban poor communities, like the one I had met in Sihanoukville, understand and exercise their rights to adequate housing and compensation in the face of development.
I’m in Cambodia’s capital at the offices of Sahmakum Teang Tnaut, the NGO he heads that takes its name from the sugar palm leaves used in traditional Khmer house construction. A ceiling fan whirls quietly and chaotically and our conversation is periodically punctuated by the mews of a hungry cat that threads between our legs.
“At the relocation site there was no livelihood; the family was dumped 25km outside of Phnom Penh at the rice fields. There was a lack of infrastructure: children dropped out of school, the healthcare centre wasn’t working, there were no public services. They had to abandon the house and come back to the city to find work”.
A 2011 Sahmakum Teang Tnaut report on the social impact of railway development saw the organisation suspended for five months after the Ministry of Interior directly petitioned Cambodia’s Prime Minister, Hun Sen; less than one month after our interview in May, Sarom will be arrested (but thankfully released the same day) after protesting for the release of other NGO staff arbitrarily detained.
“Development is for all, not just for the gated community”, Sarom insists.
Sahmakum Teang Tnaut do not want to block progress: after all, this is their country, too, and they would share the benefits. What they do want is for the government to include affected communities in committees and development plans and, by creating a dialogue, respond to their concerns and demands through public hearings. Cambodia has had land laws since 2001 (several years before many other countries in South East Asia), housing and circular policies designed specifically to protect people living on land like the railway and an expropriation law. None of these instruments address compensation in detail but it is stated clearly that payments should be made before any development takes place.
A large part of Sarom’s work is visiting communities directly to help them to make a settlement profile and map where they live. “Family books, ID cards, utility bills...proving who you are or where your house is helps to build a strong community”.
Importantly, he also keeps them informed of projects that might affect them and how to contact the contractors should they need to build a compensation case. Life becomes hard when you rely on microfinance to survive, your house lost and crippling debt on your shoulders: “The communities must understand the details of development: people want their voices to be heard”.
Back in Sihanoukville, the intensity of the afternoon heat is dissolving into night as the community prepares to celebrate Year of the Monkey.
“You’re unlucky today”, a man tells me, “If you had come later, we would have asked you to dance!” We discuss what kind of fortune we’ll all have as I prepare to leave, and this is my inauspicious start. They expect this year to be luckier, and I wonder if luck is enough to protect their community and keep pace with the engine of development.