February 11: President Bidya Devi Bhandari has underscored the need for wiping out legal ambiguities and addressing interests and pressure of multi-stakeholders for intensifying development projects.    

In her address to the joint sitting of the federal parliaments on Friday, President Bhandari expressed concerns regarding the lacklusture pace of development projects.

“In order to address the problems, an enabling legislation should be immediately adopted and implemented. The legislation should facilitate the procurement process, utilization of forest area and public land, human resources management, contract management, linking employees’ performance appraisal to their performance level, inter-agency coordination, and incentives for project managers,” she said in the address.    
 According to the president, all sides’ attention is required to guarantee quality of infrastructures.

“Development activities cannot move properly in the absence of quality infrastructure. I am confident that the government will pay attention not only to the construction of infrastructure but also to the regular maintenance of the existing infrastructure by ensuring the implementation of an action plan with adequate resources,” President Bhandari said, adding that the development of an appropriate mechanism of mutual coordination for the integrated construction of different types of infrastructures at the beginning of the project would help build necessary coordination.    
Moreover, the president said attention must be paid to the proper utilization of resources in the selection and construction of infrastructure projects. Small projects that are implemented without necessary study and analyses lead to the misuse of resources and fail to yield the desired returns, said the president.

“Instead of allocating the budget for such small projects yielding no returns, it is better to manage the resources to ensure that the ongoing projects are completed within the stipulated timeframe,” she said, expressing confidence that the government would prepare its policies and programmes accordingly in the days ahead.    
Strategic infrastructure projects should be selected and built keeping national security at the core, according to her. Roads should be constructed not only as conventional infrastructure but also as links emotionally connecting the citizens of the country.    
    
She further believed that our priorities should include developing standard road network at all wards of the local level, linking the services provided by the state with the road network, developing transport infrastructure to facilitate the means of transportation and to deliver the goods and services to the market, providing easy and accessible transportation facilities to the common people, completing the ongoing road construction within the stipulated time, and marking road transportation safe and reliable.    
President Bhandari was for preparing the framework of infrastructure development only upon ensuring the necessity, relevance and sustainability of the infrastructure. -- RSS