In the modern era, it is a universally acknowledged fact that without constructing robust infrastructure, a country cannot prosper. A country's overall economic, social and cultural development hinges on infrastructure. Without having vibrant networks of transport (roads, railways, airports, shipping ports, and others), energy, health and education infrastructure, no country can expedite the development process and thus lag in bringing prosperity to its people. The construction of development infrastructure largely depends on how resourceful a country is.

A rich nation always has a robust infrastructure while a poor nation cannot. Also true is the fact that the mobilisation of technology and technicians is of supreme importance for infrastructure building. Here, the contractors play a paramount role. If we look at our country's construction scenario, we find that contractors of all sizes and shapes have not played by the rules when it comes to performing their tasks with utmost honesty and diligence.

The construction of roads, bridges, power supply lines, airports, government hospitals, schools and colleges is often mired in controversy as contractors perform poorly only to incur more expenditure for the governments. We have a plenty of instances in which physical structures they have built lasted only for a few months. Bridges have collapsed before becoming operational. Defective engineering designs have cost millions to the government. The construction of airports, hydropower and water supply projects has lingered for years, all because of inefficiency, fraudulence and other shortcomings on the part of our contractors. The most irksome aspect of the construction business of the present time in the country is a contractor gets one after another government contract to build infrastructure even though he has committed several mistakes while carrying out infrastructure building. Owing to the fraudulent acts they get engaged in, many contractors have faced legal punishment. Many of them have been blacklisted.

All these existing anomalies in the construction business have compelled Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to instruct Nepali contractors to pay attention to the timely and quality construction of their respective projects. They should cost-effectively complete the work by complying with the standard of quality requirements of their projects. Addressing the 12th convention of Federations of Contractors' Associations of Nepal (FCAN), PM Deuba said that the government had played the role of a facilitator to the construction business by introducing timely policies or bringing about changes in such policies as requested by the contractors for standardising of the construction works in the country. He further asked Nepali contractors to raise their standards to be able to compete in the global tender building of the mega MCC project to be implemented in the country soon.

Given the malpractices of our contractors, the government brought about the 11th amendment to the Public Procurement Regulations that now ended the practice of Nepali contractors participating in biddings without completing many projects at hand. They are accused of delaying or defaulting the construction of many roads, bridges and building projects. The nexus between contractors and corrupt politicians and bureaucrats must end for the sake of nation's overall development and prosperity. To achieve such a goal, a raft of new measures are required to rein in erring and gluttonous contractors against whose foul play the government must remain in constant vigil.