June 19: Eight years after the expansion of the Jorpati-Gokarna-Sundrijal road, preparations have been started for blacktopping the road. The locals are worried about the quality of the road because the blacktopping has been started during the rainy season.

The commuters have been facing problems since a long time because the blacktopping was not done even in eight years after signing the contract. The road is full of potholes and there is daily traffic congestion.

With the onset of monsoon, the contractor started blacktopping the road in Gokarneshwar Municipality-1 Nayapati bridge area. After the builders laid the blacktopping, heavy rainfall on Saturday evening washed away all of those blacktopping. There is still work to be done in many places on both sides of the road.

"During the rainy season, commuting on this road becomes difficult due to water logging in the potholes," said Narayan Bahadur Subedi, spokesperson for Gokarneshwar Municipality. He said that since the federal government had signed the contract for the project, the contractor was not accountable towards the local government. As a result, the road remained in a dilapidated state.

The seven kilometer road, which was contracted in 2072 with the target of completion within the fiscal year 075/76, has been stalled for eight years. Initially, the road expansion work was stopped after the locals who had houses on both the sides of the road protested that they would not allow the work to continue without compensation. The contract to build a 22-meter wide road from the central point was awarded to CM Construction by the Kathmandu Valley Road Extension Project.

About 900 house owners demanded compensation. Therefore, the road expansion could not take place on time.

Under the initiative of Gokarneshwar Municipality, it was later agreed to extend the road by 7 meters each on the right and left sides of the center in populated areas and 11 meters each in the places where there were public lands. Four years have passed since the agreement was reached. Passengers have been suffering for years as the road construction has been stalled for a long time.

Although the road expansion work has been completed in most of the places, the contractor is yet to finish the work in some sections and the locals are complaining that it is difficult to travel when it rains.

Samudra Shrestha, who runs a roadside grocery shop in Attarkhel, said that he started getting health problems due to the muddy road in rainy season and dusty condition in the dry season.

After the road upgrading work was not completed within the stipulated time, the deadline was extended till the fiscal year 076/77. However, the work has not been completed even after extending the deadline time and again.

According to Subedi, the spokesperson of the municipality, the road expansion work was started at a cost of Rs 580 million.

According to the construction company, the work has been delayed due to various technical problems. The contractor company says that the road expansion work has been affected due to the fact that electricity poles, wires and other structures have not been removed in some places, even though cutting trees on the road was done during the lockdown period.

Seema Tamang, a local, complained that she is worried that she will have to travel in mud during the rainy season this year as the road is not completed yet.