Sindhulimadi, February 21

Vehicular movement, which had been halted when a stretch of the Khurkot-Nepalthok road section of BP Highway at Bhalayotar in Sitalpati VDC, Sindhuli, suddenly caved in on Sunday night, resumed today morning.

According to Chief District Officer Tara Bahadur Karki, a bypass road has been built to facilitate vehicular movement until the damaged road section is repaired. “As the repair might take time, the bypass road will serve to ensure passage of vehicles at least until the repair work is completed,” he said, adding that vehicles are allowed to ply through the bypass only for a limited time, from 6:00am to 6:00pm in view of the bottleneck at the bypass road.

Thirty-seven metres of the road had fallen into the Sunkoshi River.

Security personnel from the Nepali Army, Armed Police Force, and Nepal Police had worked to vamp up a bypass road by using heavy equipment from the road department. With the bypass road in place, vehicles that were stranded earlier have left for their destinations.

Regarding the road cave-in , the administration has attributed it to a dry landslide. “The earth supporting the road was already weak and loose due to last year’s quake, and a recent dry landslide caused the road to collapse,” said sources at the administration.

Constructed with financial and technical assistance of JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency), the highway project took 19 years to complete, and came into operation around two years ago.