RASUWA, March 13: On May 29, 2018, the Division Road Office (DRO), Nuwakot, established a unit to look after the roads in Rasuwa.

After the establishment of the unit, the DRO announced to station an engineer and technicians there. Shortly after that, the DRO sent two technicians there. The technicians stayed at the unit for three months. Since then, the DRO hasn’t sent a single staffer, citing the lack of employees.
Because there are no employees at the Rasuwa unit of the DRO, all works of the unit are being carried out by the DRO Nuwakot itself. The DRO had made preparations for stationing an engineer and two technicians at its Rasuwa unit which has been set up in the building of the Education Development and Coordination Unit.  However, the Rasuwa unit still doesn’t have even a single employee.

The Trisuli-Dhunche road section, a part of Pashang Lahmu roadway which links Ramche to the Dhunche road and which was built in 1984 is pitifully damaged and worn out now. The road linking Dhunche to Syaphru is in a similar condition. 

The Rasuwa unit office was set up following complaints by the locals that road works were not effective because there was no road office in the district. But establishing this office has become meaningless as the office doesn’t have a single employee, according to a local Pramod Kumar Titung.

Titung lamented that the poor condition of roads has widely hampered the tourism and other sectors. “The poor condition of roads in here keeps people away from coming here for travel or any other purposes,” he said.

Stressing the need for having proper roads for the overall development of the area, Titung suggested that the DRO Nuwakot should make sturdy plans and implement them. “This must be taken seriously. The DRO should send enough employees as soon as possible to carry out all the works effectively,” Titung said.  

President of Rasuwa civil society, Babulal Tamang said that the lack of employees at the office has created many problems. “It would be easy to upgrade and maintain roads if there were a proper office manned with enough employees,” he said.
Few employees but more work: DRO

Currently, the DRO in Nuwakot has been looking after the roads in five districts – Rasuwa, Dhading, Makawanpur, Chitwan and Nuwakot. It has shouldered the responsibility of repairing 47 different roads.  

The DRO has only two engineer out of five positions and five sub-engineers out of 12 positions. Due to the lack of required numbers of employees, even the monitoring and supervision of roads has been affected, according to Engineer Rajendra Maharjan. “We can barely manage to go to field for inspection,” said Maharjan. 

Rs 30.4 million allocated for upgrading roads
A total of Rs 30.43 million has been allocated for upgrading the Betrawati-Dhunche and Dhunche-Syaphru road sections of the Pashang Lahmu Highway. It is estimated that nearly Rs 30.12 million will be used for paving different road sections with concrete. 

Rs 100 million of Constituency Development Fund for roads
It has been estimated that a total of Rs 100 million from the Constituency Development Fund will be used for the construction and upgrading of three different roads in the district - Rs 10 million for the construction of Syaubaari-Gosaikunda roadway, Rs 50 million for Satdobato Thulogaun- Dandadaun roadway and Rs 40 million for Sahidpark Kalika roadway.

 
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• Trisuli-Dhunche_road.