Mugling-Narayangad Road Inspection
Mugling-Narayangad Road Inspection
KTM Metro Reporter
August 3, 2017
Kathmandu: Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had inspected the Mugling-Narayangad Road, and posted his picture with his entourage of ministers on his facebook on August 2, 2017.
Expansion work on this vital road connecting hills with terai has been going on since April 2015 with the funding of the World Bank, and was supposed to complete within two years but the quakes in 2015 and then the Indian embargo on the trucks entering Nepal from India for about six months had stalled the work on this road.
Dry and wet landslides have been the regular events sometimes totally stopping the traffic on this road. Thousands of passengers have to spend hours on the vehicles waiting for opening of the road for traffic. They took many hours more than the regular time for reaching their destinations.
So, Prime Minister Deuba took personal initiatives to push the contractor and project people to complete the expansion of the road before the longest Hindu festival called Dashain so that common folks could travel to their homes for the festival that starts in two months time.
The Chinese government had built this road for Nepal in 1979. It is 36 km long; journey on this road is 70 minutes for any vehicles. This road has cut short the time required for reaching the terai from hills considerably. Previously, only the Tribhuvan Highway connected hills with terai but traveling on this highway took more than eight hours for any vehicles.
The width of this Mugling-Narayangad road was five meters. Now, the expansion work has been ongoing for making 11-meter width for 16 km from Narayangad, and then seven-meter up to Mugling; and the time to drive will reduced to 35 minutes from 70 minutes, the news in “gorkhapatra” of today stated.
Only 53 percent of the expansion work has been done, the project needed to be completed in April 2017, according to the agreement reached with the World Bank but the quakes and the embargo have totally stopped the expansion work, then the new agreement was done to complete the project in December 2017, the news in “gorkhapatra” stated quoting the project chief as saying.