Chitwan, December 1  

Acute shortage of fuel has obstructed work on expansion of the Narayangadh-Muglin road section.

The road expansion project’s information officer Engineer Shiva Khanal said that as many as 13 excavators and 25 tippers were operating on a regular basis on three sides. Besides, large equipment too was being imported for the work.

Khanal said work had been halted as machines and equipment could not be operated due to the fuel crisis.

Khanal said all the equipment was gathering dust due to acute fuel crisis.

“If work continued without obstruction, up to 14 per cent work would have been completed by now. However,

only 3.5 per cent work is over owing to the disruption,” said Khanal.

If fuel crisis has halted work on the one hand, then on the other, workers have become jobless putting the contracting companies into trouble.

Dividing the Narayangadh-Muglin road section into three parts, three different companies were awarded contracts to complete the work by April of 2017. Work had started last April.

The road expansion work was launched through Nepal-India Regional Trade and Transit Project at a cost of Rs 1.91 billion and 910 million rupees was funded by World Bank. India’s BLA and Nepal’s Shrestha Construction had been jointly awarded the contract to carry out work on the 10-kilometre road stretch from Aanptari in Bharatpur to Dasdhunga.

Likewise, India’s Woodhill and Lama Construction were assigned the 11-kilometre road stretch from Dasdhunga to Simalatal and 12.5-kilomere road stretch expansion work from Simaltal to Muglin had been awarded to India’s Supreme and Nepal’s Rautaha Construction Company.

Workers in the construction companies have put up walls of soil and stones, but they are yet to build cemented walls, break the cliffs and flatten the uneven cliffs and hills.

Chitwan CDO Binod Prasad Singh said they had allocated 3,000 litres of fuel to the under-construction projects through Division Road Office every week.

Engineers, however, said that fuel provided through the road division would not be adequate to operate development projects.

After the road expansion, the time taken to travel from Narayangarh to Muglin will be reduced massively, engineer Khanal said.

At present, however, potholes and cracks and the ongoing construction work are giving a hard time to passengers.