Although the use of dozer for the road construction seems good for development, it is rather not good for long term, say experts.[break]
The awareness among the remote villagers that development begins with the construction of motorway is positive to some extent; however, the unplanned construction and development should be mulled at the earliest as it leaves regret to the users later.
The roadways constructed in the village with ill-competition among the villagers without considering its impacts on ecology, soil erosion, and planning obviously does have no durability. However, very heavy equipments like dozer and excavator are seen moving here and there in the village.
The use of such heavy equipments has also challenged the daily bread and butter of the workers because it has displaced their shovel, spade and picks the workers used for construing roadway.
The competition among the people to reach the roadway near their homes, and the eccentricity of political leaders has neither made the roadway systematic nor the state coffer utilized. Rather, the consumers share the experience that hamlets and the villages have been put at the imminent risk of the landslide and destruction.
Hefty amount has been wasted in the roadway re-construction and repair due to the landslides and floods.
As the political parties and the policy makers have not understood the aspiration of the people, the programmes on priority have not been selected properly, said Dinesh Chandra Devkota, Member of the National Planning Commission.
"The public awareness to construct roadway thinking it a development is inspiring but the use of dozer to construct roadway in winter which helps form gullies and erosion in rainy season cannot be sustainable development," he added.
While constructing the roadway, it is made just for immediate use which has no base to broaden in future but the government is not interfering this as it has helped the transportation.
It is the need that Ministry of Local Development, District Development Committee and other technical offices in the district need coordinating among one another and link such local roadways to the big highways.
The random construction of the roadways has damaged the canals, water supplied grinding mills, and water pipes so such roadways are not permanent.
Considering these, the government has launched long-term projects this year by allocating some Rs 500,000 to 700,000 in each district before constructing the roadways.
The project will study and determine where and how to reach the roadways, Devkota added.
Similarly, Senior Division Engineer Suraj Sigdel said there are 4952-km high quality blacktopped roadways while 2095-km graveled roadways, and 3,885 non-graveled roadways in Nepal.
However, the government has no record of such roadways stretched in the recent time as the construction of the roadways these days have been carried out even by the District Development Committee, VDC and the autonomous bodies too.
The government has recently formed an agricultural roadway department giving emphasis to the construction of the eco-friendly roadways.
As compared to the past, the use of heavy machines as crane, roller, dozer and excavator have been highly increased in the time as recent as seven years.
Before seven years, hardly 20 heavy equipments were imported in a year but it has ballooned up to some 500 to 700 in the recent past, said Ramesh Dahal, Officer at Transport Management Department.
A dozer and excavator cost Rs 5 million in minimum ranging up to Rs 30 billion the highest. There are 5000 such equipments in country now. In Bagmati zone alone, there are 114 excavators, and 885 crane, loader and dozers registered, says a record.
However, there are aging heavy equipments in a number of 487 under the Department of Roads.
The government imposes only four percent customs to the new and five percent to the old equipments while importing. There is no environment pollution standard imposed on such heavy equipments. Moreover, even the road repair tax on these has been excised. As these are used almost in the villages, far away from the city, the trend of evading tax is growing.
Although the overuse of such heavy equipments has brought a bandwagon of roadway construction, the use of only a single excavator affects the livelihood of thousands of labours. Moreover, it has destroyed the arable land and caused the houses thrown up with random plots. The trend of being ready to face risk with the lure of making the lands costly has created a suspicion that people are responsible for future generation.
Seeing the destruction of the green hills and the transportation of stone, sand and soil, people have begun complaining the heavy equipments were misused.
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