My Blog

A Train Operator

By Bin Molyka

Sitting in front of a sewing machine, Lay Vanthan is not the one who sews the canvas for a living but helps his wife with her work in order to earn some more money to support his whole family. Since the Royal Railway of Cambodia is no longer transporting as usual like before, all the staff in this railway station becomes unemployed. Lay Vathan is one of them. In the Royal Railway of Cambodia, Lay Vathan works as a train operator.

“I start working in the Royal Railway of Cambodia since 1988.”

Been working in the R.R.C for almost half of his life, Lay Vanthan is skillful in his career.

“For the first 15 years, I worked as a machinist.”

After 15 years of hard work and experience as a machinist, Lay Vanthan was promoted to a train operator when there are not many train operators in the Royal Railway of Cambodia. Spending two years in training as a train operator, he finally becomes a train operator till nowadays. But what is so surprising is that, after the promotion to be a train operator, his salary did not increase as he expected like other people’s promotion in their career. Just like other government staff, Lay Vathan can only earn 100,000 Riel per month. Since this amount of money is not enough for supporting his family, he always tries to do many jobs as much as possible beside his main job in the Railway.

“Sometimes, I work as a motor dob driver or help my wife’s work or even help my mother-in-law to do some farming in harvest seasons if I am available.”

Being a father of three children who are studying in high school and University, Lay Vanthan never hesitate to keep earning more money as much as possible to support his son and daughters, and not even express or show his tiredness of work to his family.

“I do want to see a better future life for my children; I don’t want them to work hard like me or my wife. It’s the reason why my wife and I try to work as much as possible to help and support them.”

While helping his wife sewing, Lay Vathan, doesn’t forget to mention about his work task at the Railway station. His eyes and his arms are busy concentrating on sewing on his wife’s work and he was beginning to say that his work responsibility is to operate the train if there is a need to transport products to Phnom Penh from the provinces or to other provinces from Phnom Penh.

Normally the train carries many products like coal, cements, oil and others from Thailand and Sihanouk seaport. Each time he operates the train to the provinces, he has to work in a team of two people. He and his colleague split the work to operate the train. These trains are from the French colonial time and till now, all of those trains in the Royal Railway of Cambodia are very old among other transportations. Furthermore, the railroad is another obstacle for this old transportation. For example, the speed of train should be 40km per hour but in reality, the trains in Cambodia can only reach 20km per hour or less to be safe on the rail road.

“Each time I go to the provinces and back to Phnom Penh, I spend at least three or four days or even a week or two weeks. But it does really depend on how safe the railroad is and the machine of the train.”

Whenever he is on train duty to provinces, Lay Vanthan has to bring some food, water and clothes along with him. Because there are not many places selling food along the way and he has to operate the train non-stop with his colleague.

Being a train operator as a main career in his life, Lay Vanthan said he doesn’t want to stop working in this career even though now his job is postponed for a few months and receives low salary.

According to Lay Vanthan, The Royal Railway of Cambodia is receiving investment from a private company called Toll Royal Railway of Cambodia. And most recently, he was offered to be a staff at the Toll Royal Railway of Cambodia, but this job offering is not to be a train operator like before. In contrast, he employed to be a train machinist as he has many experience in this field rather than operating the train.

Loving his profession and not having many choices for a new career are the reasons why he decided to go back and work in Toll Royal Railway of Cambodia.

###

Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment