Kathmandu, February 27

Over 72,000 road projects are in a limbo across the country, as their construction has not moved ahead for the last four months due to lack of coordination between the central, provincial and local governments, the Development and Technology Committee of the Federal Parliament was told today.

These projects are being built under the multi-year contract model, meaning works have been contracted out for a period of more than a year.

The parliamentary committee today directed the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) to provide details of all these projects within three days and explain the cause of their delay.

“Why is the government with two-thirds support of lawmakers failing to address problems faced by these projects?” questioned lawmaker Ganesh Pahadi.

Over 72,000 road projects were transferred by the federal government to provincial and local governments earlier this year, according to the MoPIT.

“These projects are now under the jurisdiction of the provincial and local governments.

But provincial and local governments either do not have adequate budget or skilled human resources to execute the work. This has completely halted construction of these projects,” said Physical Infrastructure and Transport Minister Raghubeer Mahaseth. “We are holding discussions with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration to resolve these problems.”

On December 18, a Cabinet meeting had decided to handover over 72,000 road projects that were under the Department of Roads to the provincial and local governments.

Following this decision, the MoPIT had not only handed over projects to provincial and local governments, but information such as implementation status, physical and financial progress, details of expenditure in the past and projected spending plan for the currently fiscal year.

But of over 72,000 projects, provincial and local governments are yet to take ownership of 7,000 road projects being built at a cost of Rs 26 billion. Officials of provincial and local governments said they had denied to take ownership of these projects as the federal government had failed to allocate adequate budget. Federal government officials acknowledged that they had released only Rs six to seven billion for projects being built at a cost of Rs 26 billion.