Nawalparasi. The narayanghat-Butwal road section of the four-lane East-West Highway is to be extended by one year. Engineer Chudaraj Dhakal, project director of the Project Directorate (ADB) of the Department of Roads, said that although the construction company had asked for a long time, preparations have been made to extend the deadline after agreeing to complete the work by one year.

“After talking to the construction company and the consultant of the project, we have agreed to complete the work other than finishing work in one year, so we are preparing to extend the deadline by one year,” he said, adding, “We have reached the conclusion of extending the deadline by one year after the construction company agreed to complete 90 percent of the work.” According to Project Director Dhakal, the deadline extended for the third time of the road project is ending on July 15. He informed that 69.3 percent physical progress of the project has been completed so far.

Engineer Shiva Khanal, information officer of narayanghat-Butwal road project ‘Eastern Section’, said that the construction company is currently working on the Daunne section. Due to the problems faced by the passengers due to the road in Daunne, human resources have been concentrated to slope there. Works are underway to construct blacktopping, bridges, four-lane roads and dividers at Chormara along with road slopes in Daunne. At present, 272 labourers are working for the expansion of the road.

Information Officer Khanal said that although the construction of small bridges in this section has been completed and vehicles are in operation, the construction of big bridges is going on. He said that although a big bridge has been constructed on the dry rivulet of Danda, the approach road is yet to be constructed. “At present, work is going on on the bridge at Chormara, the bridge over Beldiha rivulet will come into operation in two-three days, and we are working on the slope work on the bridge of Jayashree rivulet soon. ’

Stating that 100 meters road at Pulchowk of Gaindakot is yet to be blacktopped, Khanal said that about seven kilometers of blacktopping is yet to be done in the area where the bridge is located, chormarama and from Dumkibas to Daunne. Of the 114 kilometres of the Narayanghat-Butwal road, the eastern section has about 65 kilometres. Out of the roads in the eastern section, the bridge covers an area of one and a half kilometers and the remaining seven kilometers of the road will also be blacktopped soon. He said that now the journey has become easier in the section other than Daunne.

He said that the physical progress of this section has been increased by about 20 kilometers in a year. “When the deadline for the second extension expired, the blacktopped road in this section was only 29 kilometers,” he said, adding that 56 kilometers of the road has been blacktopped in the eastern section till mid-June. China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited, a Chinese construction company, is working on the road expansion.

The construction company had signed a contract with the Government of Nepal to start the work from February 1, 2018 and complete it within 42 months. The construction company has been extending the deadline for the expansion of the road citing various reasons as the work was not completed within the stipulated time. Engineer Chudaraj Dhakal, project director at the Department of Roads, Project Directorate, ADB, said that the deadline for the extension has now been finalized.

The total cost of narayanghat-Butwal road expansion project is Rs 16.99 billion. The narayanghat-Butwal road project is estimated to cost Rs 9.13 billion for the eastern section (Gaindakot-Daunne) and Rs 7.86 billion for the western section (Daunne-Butwal). The government has the remaining amount of the project, which has been taken forward with 85 percent loan assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).