Kathmandu, January 26

Lack of skilled workers has hit construction of around 2,000 bridges on the national highways. According to Department of Roads, contractors are compelled to wait for their turn to hire workers due to shortage of skilled human resources in the country. Currently, around 900 bridges, including 276 on national highways, are under construction in the country, said Deputy Director General of DoR and Chief of Bridge Division Arjun Jung Thapa.

Senior Divisional Engineer at DoR Nareshman Shakya said finding workers with technical expertise was difficult although unskilled workers were easily available. DoR officials said finding the workers in the remote areas was more difficult compared to urban and developed sites.

DoR has awarded bridge construction projects worth Rs 62 billion to different contractors. Normally, 15 to 30 skilled workers, apart from menial workers, are required to construct a bridge.

As per the contract agreement, construction of all the 900 bridges are supposed to complete within three to four years. Thapa said only 50 bridges were expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal.

Likewise, construction of suspension bridges also remains sluggish. Suspension Bridge Division at the Ministry of Local Development said skilled workers were not available although work on replacing cable contraptions with suspension bridges was on at several remote locations.

The government plans to replace all the cable contraptions also called tuin in local language, but only 45 tuins out of 171 have been replaced so far, said chief of the division Guru Prasad Sharma. The government has allocated Rs 160 million to replace cable contraptions with suspension bridges for this fiscal.