The ten-kilometer stretch of Naubise-Nagdhunga road, which links both the highways and is the main gateway to the capital, has been reduced to bumpy dirt tracks, dotted with potholes. [break]
It is hard to believe that the Department of Road (DoR) had repaired the the Muglin-Naubise road stretch only three months ago.
“The situation has arisen due to the low quality of the maintenance work, which was repaired all through the monsoon,” complained Ram Krishna Pokharel, an hotelier at Sisnekhola section of the Naubise-Nagdhunga road.
A hefty budget is earmarked every year for repair and maintenance of the road stretch.
But, the repaired road hardly remains intact for a month, locals say, and argue that corruption is rampant.
Adventure Construction Service had carried out maintenance work this year, said engineer Raj Dev Sah at the DoR.
The locals, who weary of the annual “maintenance” work, are of the opinion that the lack of public participation in the process is the main cause of recurrent problem.
Pokharel said that the local residents need to form road user groups to ensure that the road is properly repaired -- at the right time, using standard construction material.
But the authorities, as usual, have one or the other explanation for the problem:
“This road can hold only vehicles weighing up to 10 tons. But, the vehicles carrying up to 50 ton of load ply the road. Such heavily loaded vehicles wear out the road quickly,” Sah said.
The DoR maintains that the overloaded dump trucks transporting construction materials from Dhadhing and Nuwakot to Kathmandu are the main culprits. Over 500 drum trucks enter Kathmandu carrying construction material, exceeding the weight limits set by the DoR.
Now that the DoR is planning to lay concrete slabs instead of the asphalt along the Naubise- Nagdhunga road, in an attempt to get rid of the frequent maintenance work, the locals have become cautiously hopeful that the road will last longer.
The cemented road is expected to last for 50 years, according to the DoR officials.
Related story
In Pictures: Commuters stranded due to landslide in Narayangadh...
