13% complete. Hopewell and the SRT each blamed the other for the failure of the 80 billion baht project. Both parties sued, and the case has been in litigation since its cancellation. On 23 April 2019, Thailand's Supreme Administrative Court upheld an arbitration committee's ruling in favour of Hopewell. The court ordered SRT to pay Hopewell compensation of 11.88 billion baht, plus 7.5% interest per year. The interest, totaling 13 billion baht, brings SRT's total liability to nearly 25 billion baht, payable within 180 days. Lack of freight revenue Rail freight, which is cheaper—only roughly half the cost of road transport—safer, and more environmentally-friendly than road transport, accounted for only 1.4 percent of freight tonnage carried in 2015. SRT aims to boost its share of cargo transport to six percent with its rail duplication by 2022. Expansion of SRT's freight service, which could earn more money than the heavily subsidized passenger service, has been neglected for decades in favour of Thailand's roads. Workforce The SRT's poor financial performance and resistance to reform, coupled with the Asian financial crisis of 1997, resulted in stringent restraints being placed on SRT staffing. In July 1998, the Thai cabinet issued an order that the SRT could only hire five new employees for every 100 retirees. , the order remains in effect. SRT officials estimated in 2017 that the enterprise needed to boost staff by 20 percent to 12,000. In 2018 SRT claims that it needs 18,015 employees to operate efficiently, but only has 10,035 on staff. The train maintenance workforce has dwindled to 500 from 3,000 over the past 30 years. To make up the shortfall, the SRT hires around 4,000 "yearly staffs", usually on daily wages of 300 baht. It has also caused the SRT to pay massive amounts of overtime pay to current employees. For example, one station master in Pattani was paid 61,210 baht in monthly salary, but also an additional 102,271 baht in overtime pay. , the staffs employment quota was 4,056 but SRT hired 3,721 staffs. , SRT employed 10,292 employees and 3,928 yearly staffs, totaling 14,220 while the SRT Board approved the addition of 1,330 new workers to bring the workforce to 15,550, still fewer than needed to address staff shortages. , SRT employed 9,204 employees and 3,721 yearly staffs totaling 12,925 while employment quotas respectively was 18,015 and 4,056 totaling 22,071. Management issues To address a long