Locals visited the municipality office and the District Development Committee (DDC) numerous times to file complaint about the dilapidated road condition and seek its repair and maintenance, but to no avail. None of the departments has allocated budget for repairing the road in the last four years."If the repair and maintenance is done timely, the government would not have to invest a large sum of money. Keeping that in mind, we started visiting the DDC as soon as the road started degrading," informed Nar Prashad Lamichanne, former chairman of Jyamirgadhi VDC. "However, none bothered to take it seriously. None of the government bodies has allocated the required budget till date."
According to him, the local bodies do not care about the plights of the locals. Leaders of political parties and government workers employed at the local bodies do whatever they please.
Road stretches at Birtamod-Jalathal-Baluwadi, Birtamod-Sanischare-Khudunabari and Haldibari among other section have remained in poor condition for a very long time. Apart from the road connecting municipality and main roads, the state of every other roads are very bad in many parts of the district.
The DDC, Municipality and VDCs have started to allocate budget under the active participation of political leaders in the recent years. The projects are selected to favor political leaders for personal gains. Hence, many of the developmental works have been limited to papers only.
"Even the employees like us do not have all the ideas regarding project selection and budgets," said an employee at the DDC, seeking anonymity, adding that the selections are done by political leaders and budgets are invested in urban areas than in the villages.
The DDC published its annual policy during a program last week in the presence of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. And many had expressed dissatisfaction about the same issue at the program. During the program, Minister for Law and Justice Agni Kharel acknowledged that the district has failed to achieve balanced development and urged to make it more balanced in the coming days.
Locals complained that political parties have taken the area just as a means of earning votes. "Political leaders visited us before the election promising us they would blacktop the roads and bring development. However, the promises remain forgotten now that the election is over," said Lalita Rai, a local of Arjundhara.
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