Rautahat, April 30

The bridge construction project over the Bagmati River along the Postal Highway connecting Rautahat and Sarlahi districts is four years past its deadline.

The project’s delay has hit locals at Badahardwa of Durga Bhagawati Rural Municipality hard.

The contract agreement for the project had been signed on 14 June  2010 with a budget of 36 crore rupees with a deadline set for 13 June  2013. Contractors of the project had stopped work citing problems with its design.

The contract had been given to Lumbini Builders Pvt, Siddharthanagar, but the contracting company has taken all its machinery and staff from the project site after completing only about 35 per cent of the work.

Locals have expressed irritation over the state of the project. “We have to use boats to cross the river because of the negligence of the postal highway project and the contracting company,” they said.

Paras Jha, a local at the rural municipality, said the contractor had started work from the widest area of the river. “They constructed 14 spans and then stopped the work,” he said.

Then prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had reportedly laid the foundation stone of the bridge. Former lawmaker Baban Singh said locals had protested during the construction work saying that the bridge’s location was not right. He further added that the concerned authority had paid no attention to the locals.

Social worker Shambhu Suprime said that the Rautahat Chief District Officer had disregarded the locals’ appeal to finish the project. Civil Society Secretary Bijaya Kishwor Jha said that the contractor and the responsible persons in the project were out of contact.