By Our Correspondent
Urlabari, July 5: After more than a year-and-a-half, Mornag’s Pathari-Jante-Jyamire road has still not been blacktopped much to the dismay of local residents. Travelling during the monsoon has become a troubling inconvenience for thousands of people using the road. Traffic in the said road is mostly busy during the monsoon season than during the winter. Jante residents do not have any other alternative but to use the road because other paths get blocked by the river. “More than 20,000 people living in over 2,000 households greatly suffer during the fall. Most business men simply feel entrapped because they have to incur heavy transportation costs,” laments local entrepreneur Kuber Poudel.
On December 11, 2019, Province 1 Chief Minister Sherdhan Rai had laid the foundation stone for the infrastructure, dubbing the road as one of the region’s pride projects.
The road was touted as an ambitious scheme, which would eventually join the East-West Highway and lead to India via Dainiya village – establishing the path as a significant trade route. Locals were initially ecstatic over such prospect. The entire project was said to come into fruition within three years of beginning the work.
After 19 months, though, hardly 10 per cent of the work is completed.
In 2019, the Province government had included 62 roads in its multi-year pride project -- the Pathari-Jante-Jyamire road being one.
The Infrastructural Development Office under the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure had called for bids to blacktop the 19.6 km-long and 22-feet wide road by September 2021. Shrestha Construction Company had acquired the tender at Rs. 544.845 million including VAT. However, locals claim that Shrestha Construction has further handed over the responsibility of building the road to an unnamed company.
The government has not been able to provide even half of the budget allocated for road construction so far. In the previous fiscal year, the government was able to allocate Rs. 50 million for the road and Rs. 140 million in the current fiscal year.
Member of Parliament Upendra Prasad Ghimire expresses his dissatisfaction over the project’s snail-like pace. “The budget allocated is simply not enough to fund a project such as this,” he explains. “Without sufficient money, how is the construction supposed to move ahead,” he adds.
If the road comes into fruition, it will not only ease travel back and forth, but will also provide strategic advantage from tourism perspective, believes Bhim Prasad Pokhrel, Ward Chairperson of Letang-8. “The road will directly connect prospective Indian tourists to some of the most popular touristic sites of Province 1, thereby easing their travel plan. Likewise, it will also prove to be a lucrative trade route for farmers of northern Morang cultivating tea, cardamom, and bay leaf,” informs Pokhrel.