Money & Finance
Maybe two year or even more. No official can tell for sure when widening works of the Narayanghat-Butwal section of the East-West highway will be completed, but engineers say they are working on measures to make the busy highway pothole-free.
The widening of the 114km highway stretch from two lanes to four lanes should have been completed by August 8 this year. But thanks to the delays and missed deadlines, less than 20 percent of the works remain complete now, according to officials.
The project started February 2019 with a Rs17 billion loan assistance provided by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The road widening is being carried out in two sections - a 48.5km western section from Butwal to Daunne, and a 64.4km eastern sector from Daunne to Gaindakot.
According to Engineer Ramesh Kumar Dristi, project chief at Narayanghat-Butwal (Eastern Sector) Road Project, 131 out of 231 bridges have been constructed, and 10 out of 12 large bridges have been completed by September-end.
Making bridges is one of the major hurdles, according to him.
With bridges being constructed at a rapid pace, he said, “hopefully, the project will be completed in two years’ time.”
After China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited, the contractor of the project, failed to meet the August deadline, the government was forced to extend the deadline by a year.
With the project’s completion looking farfetched, the Department of Roads is also working to ease the problem of travellers along the route.
Besides warning the contractor to improve the work in the project, the department has also initiated temporary measures to solve the problems. Dristi said: “We are deploying water tankers to spray water on the road and reduce dust.”
Water tankers spray the road near settlement areas, which will “help both travellers and the residents”.
According to Dristi, the department has also been carrying out temporary maintenance of the road that includes filling potholes to blacktopping the road.
“In 10 to 15 days, there will be no potholes,” said Dristi.
Currently, it takes around four hours to pass this 114km highway stretch.
The expansion will see the road widened to four lanes with service lanes in urban areas and three lanes in the hilly section of Daunne, all according to Asian Highway Standards.
The road is being improved as a part of the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Highway Improvement Project which is upgrading the East-West Highway of Nepal to help better connect South Asia with East Asia.
