Ramechhap, August 1

Barely one month after the completed road was handed over to the government, the Manthali-Ramechhap road section has started peeling.

Bajraguru-Amar JV Construction had handed over the road to the government on June 30.

The road has developed cracks all over and caved in at a number of places, while landslide debris along with huge boulders have fallen on the road. This has damaged the road significantly at other places. However, there hasn’t been any initiative from any side to repair the road.

“We had built the road funded by the Asian Development Bank last year itself. But given the contract provision that makes the contractor responsible for repairing the road in the event of any damage within one year after completion of the project, the company handed it to the government on June 30 this year, in good shape,” said the construction company proprietor Kedar Ghimire.

Khurkot Road Division Officer engineer Ram Bahadur BK, on his part, disavowed knowledge that the road was handed over to the government in the first place.

Transportation entrepreneur Tapa Bahadur Lama complained about the risk they were facing on the route. “Movement of vehicles has been limited to one-way at Machchhedandi after some part of the road caved in, while the condition of the road near Ramechhap bazaar and at a number of other places isn’t good either,” said Lama.

Chandika Adhikari of Manthali Municipality blamed the contractor for the poor quality of work. “It is the contractor who should be held responsible as he apparently played fast and loose with the construction work,” said Adhikari. “In fact, we had raised the issue of quality during the road construction period itself, but nobody listened to us and we had to stay quiet,” she added. Blacktopping the 13-km road that cost around 200 million rupees had started around six years ago.