Gaighat, July 25

Life has been adversely affected in the hilly belt of Udayapur district following floods and landslides that have laid waste to a vast stretches of roads here.

Udayapur’s Timchungbung Rural Municipality employee Gautam Dahal lamented the sorry state of road linking the district headquarters that has made commuting difficult.

“While the road has been washed away by landslides at a number of places, the condition of surviving stretches is so bad that we can’t even walk,” he said, adding it took him seven days to arrive at his house.

As the roads have been ravaged by landslides, places like Tapli and Limchungbung have been virtually cut-off from the rest of the district and outside. As the situation persists still, it has created shortage of daily essentials such as salt and rice.

Limchungbung Rural Municipality mayor lamented that people of the municipality were suffering.

“It’s been around 20 days since goods stopped coming here due to the bad condition of the road. Now I fear we will die of starvation, if the condition persists for long,” he said, adding that the rural municipality has been declared crisis-hit.

Further, the mayor said he has asked the central and provincial governments to send choppers to supply daily essentials and ease the shortage of daily commodities in the district.

Hari Dahal of Tapli said he hasn’t seen such a disaster in many years.

“There is no trace of the road now due to the landslides and floods that have damaged it completely,” he said, lamenting the shortage of goods and commodities in the rural municipality. The rural municipality Chairperson Uddhav Singh Thapa also bemoaned the situation locals were facing.