KATHMANDU: The World Bank Group (WBG) has agreed to extend grant assistance worth $7.47 million to Nepal from the Global Road Safety Phase-II Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), that is administered by the WBG. The grant assistance will be spent on implementation of Road Safety Support Project and the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) will be the executing agency of the project.

The project aims to introduce and amend relevant transport-related Acts, rules and regulations in the country and provide support to operationalise the Nepal Road Safety Council and Secretariat. The major objective of the project is to install crash barriers in high risk roads of far western and mid western development regions.

Approximately 70-km of crash barriers will be installed in high risk road sections in these two regions. The road sections selected for the installation of crash barriers are Satbanjh-Baitadi-Tripurasundari road (4 km), Satbanjh-Gokuleshwor-Darchula road (10 km), Khodpe-Bajhang road (10 km), Surkhet-Kalikot-Jumla road (28 km), Tallodhungeshwor-Dailekh road (4 km) and Chhinchu-Jajarkot road (4 km), according to the Department of Roads (DoR).

As a pilot initiative of the project, DoR has already started installing crash barriers on 10 km urban roads in Pokhara and Siddhartha Highways. These crash barriers will help prevent steep vertical drops along these roads.

Other components of the project include provision of state-of-the art training on road safety for professionals, academics and government officials in order to develop local road safety-related capacity, bachelor and master level road safety courses curricula development for universities/institutes in Nepal and development of road safety database system. The project is scheduled to be completed on July 15, 2016.

An agreement to this effect was signed today at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) by Madhu Kumar Marasini, joint secretary at MoF and Takuya Kamata, country manager of the WBG.

The Department for International Development (DFID) of UK government is funding this operation through the Global Road Safety Facility to MDTF.