Even after 6 years of the contract agreement, the locals are facing problems as roads and bridges have not been built. Mashta rural municipality-1, Lachigad river, the bridge under construction has been stuck for a long time. Due to lack of bridge, the road connection is cut off in 6 wards from 2nd to 7th of the rural municipality every barkha season.
Roads have reached all the villages. Even if you can travel by car at other times, because there is no bridge, you have to walk for a long distance in Barkha,' said Birkh Bohra of Mashta-4. He said that if the bridge is not built, the residents of Latoun, Thakunna, Rilu, Day and other remote villages of the municipality are suffering more during the drought.
Infrastructure Development Office Baitadi entrusted the construction to Pushpanjali Construction in October 2075 to complete the construction within one and a half years. The office said that the total cost of the bridge is about 50 million and more than half of the amount has been paid by the contractor company. Locals say that the bridge work was abandoned after it was half built. The work was stopped after more than half of the work was done. For three years, no one has come to build the bridge,'' says Vinod Thapa of Jinnada village, which is near the bridge construction site.
Ward Chairman of Ward No. 1 Ramchandra Rokaya said that due to the contractor's delay, other development works of the municipality were also blocked. Due to the non-construction of this bridge, the locals have not only experienced problems in commuting. Development works are also stopped during drought. We have to eat food and other consumables at a high price,' he said.
Birendra Chand of the contractor company Pushpanjali Construction was contacted by Kantipur for several days about the construction of the bridge being left in abeyance. Infrastructure Development Office Bajhang has said that the office promised to start the work soon but did not work.
"Chait has said that he will start the work from the beginning," said office head Nripraj Joshi, saying that he had contacted the contractor a month ago, "Now he has neither started the work nor is he in contact."
Although more than 50 percent of the work has been done, he said that span, slope, access road construction and protection work are still left. Stating that the deadline has been extended more than three times, he said that the contractor did not work even after repeated written and oral instructions from the office. "Now that it is too much, we are thinking of proceeding with the process of action," he said.
