Following a directive by Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Keat Chhon to the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation to improve their monitoring of overloaded vehicles, a ministry official said they will build more vehicle scales.
At the closing of the Public Works Ministry’s annual conference on Thursday, Chhon pointed out that vehicles overloaded with material such as cement, steel and wood damage Cambodia’s roads and bridges, said ministry spokesman Pheng Sovicheano.
Overloaded vehicles cause more damage to bridges and roads in the Kingdom than any other factor, Sovicheano said.
“When we design roads and bridges, we have [vehicle weight] limits, depending on the type of road or bridge,” Sovicheano said. “If vehicles are overloaded, they damage roads.”
The ministry includes an overloaded vehicle control committee that weighs vehicles that authorities believe to be over the limit, but they have less than 10 scales, Sovicheano said.
“We have eight [functioning] scales in the whole country to perform regular monitoring, but are fixing some scales,” Sovicheano added.
