Young Engineer of Indonesia, prepare for Asian Highway Network

19 February 2010.

Young Engineer of Indonesia, prepare for Asian Highway Network

Daripada terus berkeluh kesah tentang KKN, Billing rate yang rendah, penjajahan ekonomi neoliberalisme dll, lebih baik kita sebagai the next engineer of Indonesia mempersiapkan diri kita untuk menghadapi suatu mega proyek yang suka atau tidak suka akan dimulai juga, dan bila kita tidak siap, maka jadilah engineer2 kita salah satu pihak yang terlibat di proyek, namun di bagian khusus berpanas2 ria sebagai field engineer saja, sementara engineer asing mengamati kita dari dalam mobil ber AC, dan meeting di head office serta hotel2 bintang 5 sambil menikmati makanan dan minuman yang lezat dan AC yang dingin.

Untuk itu, ada baiknya kita mengenal terlebih dahulu apa yang dimaksud Asian Highway Network

Berhubung keterbatasan waktu di sela2 kesibukan pekerjaan saya, maka saya ambilkan cuplikan dari wikipedia sebagai berikut:

The Asian Highway (AH) project, also known as the Great Asian Highway, is a cooperative project among countries in Asia and Europe and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), to improve the highway systems in Asia. It is one of the three pillars of Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development (ALTID) project, endorsed by the ESCAP commission at its forty-eighth session in 1992, comprising Asian Highway, Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) and facilitation of land transport projects.

Agreements have been signed by 32 countries to allow the highway to cross the continent and also reach to Europe. Some of the countries taking part in the highway project are India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh.^[1] A significant part of the funding comes from the larger, more advanced nations as well as international agencies such as the Asian Development Bank. The project is scheduled for completion in 2010.^[1]

The project aims to make maximum use of the continent’s existing highways to avoid the construction of newer ones, except in cases where missing routes necessitate their construction. Project Monitor, an Asian infrastructure news website, has commented that the:

“

early beneficiaries of the Asian Highway project are the planners within the national land transport department of the participating countries [since] it assists them in planning the most cost-effective and efficient routes to promote domestic and international trade. Non-coastal areas, which are often negligible, are the other beneficiaries.[1]

”

However, in the mid-2000s some transportation experts were sceptical about the viability of the project given the economic and political climate in both South and South-East Asia.^[1]