A bird’s eye view of Battambang town during the Water Festival in October last year. BATTAMBANG ADMINISTRATION
Battambang is one of three towns in Cambodia that will join the smart-city development initiative network among the 10 ASEAN member states.
In order to promote the construction of a smart city, the provincial administration has set priority goals by focusing on making the infrastructure in the town more attractive.
Speaking at a press conference on the province’s five years of achievements, organised by the Government Spokesperson Unit on January 24, governor Sok Lou said Battambang town has been selected for development into a smart city, in response to the expected increase in the flow of people from the countryside.
He said the provincial administration has made efforts to orient development in line with the concept of smart cities. Currently, the administration has set out the infrastructure’s improvement as priority and has been doing many tasks such as road construction, repair and expansion, rehabilitation of underground drainage systems and urban drainage systems as well as construction of a new landfill for the town.
Pruon Riththa, director of the provincial Department of Public Works and Transport, said the province has seven national roads passing through it, 40 main provincial roads and one railway.
He said the province has also completed the construction of more than 10ha of landfills. Moreover, for the past five years the province has been working to build 234 asphalt concrete roads, red gravel and dirt roads totalling 1,315km.
He noted that the construction of National Road 10 from Battambang province’s Samlot district passing through Pursat province to Koh Kong province – under the assistance of the Chinese government – is now 69.28 per cent done and scheduled to be completed at the end of 2024.
Battambang is one of the three towns in Cambodia that has been selected to be part of the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN), which has 26 members. The other two are Siem Reap and Sihanoukville.
This network was created in 2018 with the ASEAN Smart Cities Framework, which outlines city management system strategies, city development management and other development topics that focus on smart cities, which use the latest technology and urban planning strategies.
Through the ASCN, the provincial administration has worked with a number of development partners, including Japanese ministries, UNESCAP, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japanese private sector in order to orient development in accordance with the concept of the smart city.
