DHANGADI, MARCH 9
Postal road construction in Kanchanpur is anything but complete even though the contract period for the project has expired.
Contract-signing for the construction of the 62-km stretch of the postal road in Kanchanpur divided into three sections had taken place in the first quarter of 2017. In five years' time only 75 per cent of work has finished so far.
According to Postal Road Project office, Dhangadi's Information Officer Padam Bahadur Madai, while the contract period for one of the sections had finished in mid-February itself, the period for the two remaining sections is until mid-April. "Though we have still one month of the contract period left for the two sections, it's very likely that the road project won't be completed by then," Madai said.
The information officer blamed contractors for the delay in work and expressed concerns at the suffering of the locals.
Gyanmaya, a local, said dust from the road during dry season and the muddy road during the rains had given a lot of trouble to the local residents. "We don't know when we are going to get rid of this problem," she said.
As per the estimate, construction of the 62-km road will cost somewhere near 1.16 billion rupees.
The total width of the road will be 12 metres, and all structure within this area have been removed. Meanwhile, construction entrepreneur Chakra Shahi said they were facing a major obstacle in the construction of the road due to hindrance created by the Indian border force in Belauri Municipality.
"Except this section witnessing the hurdle from the Indian side, we are doing our work at full speed to complete our work as soon as possible," he said.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 10 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
