Tin Sokhavuth
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| Din Sophea was able to double the size of his welding shop and to hire more welders with savings from lower power bills. (Photo supplied) |
Last month the Asian Development Bank (ADB) issued a publication entitled “Together We Deliver”, a chapter of which was dedicated to the development of Cambodia’s electricity supply in order to help them improve their living.
In the report, ADB looked at an example of a referral hospital in Tram Kok district, Takeo province, where, one night Doctor Keo Sarum was delivering a baby for a mother in very critical condition.
“In the middle of the delivery, the solar lamps suddenly went out and the whole operating room went dark. The patient was shouting for help, and there was chaos in the waiting room,” said Dr. Sarum.
He added that, fortunately, he managed to deliver the baby by using a small battery powered torch.
“Without electricity, our patients’ lives were constantly at risk,” added Dr. Sarum.
Tram Kok referral hospital is about 80 kilometers from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, and there were about 11,500 people from 16 surrounding villages who rely heavily on this public hospital. Without electricity, the hospital used insufficient solar energy.
In cooperation with the World Bank, the Nordic Development Fund, the Electricity Authority of Cambodia, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, ADB has been supporting the Greater Subregion Transmission Project (GSTP) to construct 109 km of high voltage transmission lines to connect cheaper electricity from the border with Vietnam to Phnom Penh.
To distribute power supply to households in rural areas, private companies were encouraged to connect from the main power lines to households and small businesses in different villages at a reasonable price.
According to ADB, through the GSTP, new substations, a national control center in Phnom Penh, and the reinforcement of transmission infrastructure around the city were built. As a result, 90,000 new households were connected to the new power lines, including 50,000 households living in rural areas along the power lines.
‘’The rural customers, who were mostly rice farmers living below the poverty line, were offered low-cost connections and allowed to pay fees in installments,“ added ADB.
This low-cost electricity also led to the expansion of small businesses. Another example cited by ADB was the case of Oum Sovannarith, a 27-year-old father of one, who owned a chicken farm near his house.
He needed electricity to turn on the lights in his chicken farm at night in order to let his 1,300 chickens eat all night so that they could provide eggs every day and grow as fast as possible.
“Without this electricity, my business would not be possible. I spent about $40 per month on electricity. I would be spending up to $300 per month for diesel-based power,” said Mr. Sovannarith.
Another example of a growing small business, due to low-cost electricity, was the case of a welder named Din Sophea, a 27-year-old father of two, who opened a small welding shop in Takeo province in 2010.
Before the installation of a power grid with funding by the GSTP, Mr. Sophea used a generator to run his shop. He had to spend 40 percent of his income for the gasoline. But when his town connected to the power grid, he paid only $85 a month for electricity to run his shop instead of $300 a month.
As a result, he could expand his business by doubling the size of his shop in 2015, and hiring four more welders. Hence, he made $1,500 a month instead of $800 a month.
“With more income, I can buy better food for my children, and I hope to send them to good schools in the next few years. My dream does not end here. I am saving money for further expansion, more welding equipment, and to employ more people,” said Mr. Sophea.
However, according to the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), the current electricity supply did not respond to basic demands, because the quality of electricity was not reliable, and the 24-hour electricity supply was not assured.
The CDC added that currently 22.47% of Cambodian households are connected to electricity (54% of urban households and 13% of rural househols). But the state-owned enterprise Electricite Du Cambodge (EDC) hopes to provide electricity to all villages in Cambodia by 2020, and to 70% of all the rural households by 2030.
The CDC also said that to expand the power source the government relies on hydropower plants, coal power plants, and imported electricity. The construction of eight hydropower plants and three coal power plants was on the way and will be finished in 2020. The construction of power lines to import electricity from Thailand and from Vietnam was finished in 2012. The government has also been planning to import electricity from Laos, and the expansion of transmission lines to connect with Laos will be completed in 2016.
The capital of Phnom Penh alone consumes 90 percent of the total electricity while around 80 percent of the population is living in rural areas with no electricity at all. According to 2013 statistics, only 22.5 percent of Cambodian households have been connected to electricity.
Besides the ADB and the World Bank, India has also agreed to provide a loan of $70 million to help Cambodia construct the necessary power lines.
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