So far 70 billion 88 million rupees have been spent on construction
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It has been 18 years since the construction of Madhyapahari highway started, the progress is only 80 percent. The contract management work in the project has not yet been completed. The government has not given resource consent for the new contract.
This project was started in financial year 064/65 to connect 215 settlements of 26 districts of Madhyapahar. After the completion of the project, it is estimated that 1 crore people will benefit.
The work has been started according to the goal of building a two-lane black paper road from Chiwabhanjang in Panchthar in the east to Zhulaghat in Baitadi in the west. Out of 1 thousand 879 km, 1 thousand 16.07 km of road construction is being done under the project. 462 km road is under other projects. So far, only 1 thousand 478.7 km of roads have been blacked out of planned and divisional roads.
Out of 137 bridges, only 180 have been completed. Currently, 137 km roads in 9 sections, including 16 bridges damaged by floods, are yet to be managed. Rabindralal Das, the project director of the Madhyapahari Highway Project Directorate, said that 1.15 billion rupees for the new contract and 1.96 billion rupees for the new roads and bridges were requested but were not received. A letter was sent to the Ministry of Finance last October through the road department for source agreement.
'We have not been able to get more contracts due to not getting the consent of the source,' he said, 'which has increased the risk of the project not being completed on time and being delayed.' According to him, some contracts under Madhyapahari highway are in the stage of completion, some are sick and some have good progress.
'Now the problem is in the Bheri river bridge connecting Jajarkot and Rukum West, we have asked for the resource consent to break the old contract and build a new one,' he said, 'So far it has not been possible to get it, because there is no bridge in Bheri, the local residents are forced to travel 32 km more to reach their destination.' The contract of Pankhu river bridge in Khotang has to be broken and a new one has to be made. Some road sections in Khotang and Tehrathum have been broken, so a new one has to be done. The initial cost estimate of the
project is 33 billion 36 million rupees. The revised cost estimate is Rs 84 billion 33 crore. 70 billion 88 million rupees have been spent so far. According to the revised schedule, the work should be completed by 084/85. "There is a problem of asking for resource consent every year," he said, "even if the government says that this is not a problem in national pride projects, there is always a compulsion to work in this way."
