Lamenting the high number of traffic accidents across the country, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday blamed a recent deadly crash on an excess of parental generosity and offered his own strict rearing techniques as a model for others.
On March 1, a 23-year-old medical student killed three children and seriously injured six other people with her car in Phnom Penh while attempting to flee the scene of two earlier minor crashes.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh, Mr. Hun Sen yesterday blamed the accident on parents spoiling their children.
“We not only have sympathy for the loss of two girls, but we also have sympathy for the driver because her parents spoiled her too much and bought her a car while she was still not a good driver,” he said. “Now, she has lost her future and she cannot avoid being punished under the law.”
“The case is also a good reminder for parents: Don’t spoil your children too much.”
By contrast, the prime minister recalled the tough love he had shown his eldest son, Hun Manet, growing up in the 1980s.
“I was not incapable of buying a motorbike for my son, but I did not buy one for him,” he said, adding that his son would ride a bicycle to school instead.
“Every morning, my children had to carry brooms and baskets to school and clean their classrooms,” he said. “They were not prioritized because they were the prime minister’s children.”
Now 35, Hun Manet holds a number of senior posts in the military and Defense Ministry and is often talked of as being groomed to assume the country’s reins of power after his father.
“I would like to call on everyone; rich, poor, motorist, car driver, truck driver, especially the heavy truck drivers, please be careful,” Mr. Hun Sen said.
“Now, we should work together to implement this proverb: Today and tomorrow without traffic accidents.”
Preap Chan Vibol, a member of the government’s National Committee for Road Safety, said the Transportation Ministry would meet with 35 transport firms to review their safety procedures and to discuss ways to improve on them.
He said traffic mishaps cost the country roughly $310 million in 2011 and that 366 people died in road accidents during the first two months of this year.
