JOMSOM: The road linking Jomsom, the district headquarters of Mustang, with the religious and tourism destination Kagbeni in the Muktichhetra rural municipality is being blacktopped. The 13-km-long Jomsom-Kagbeni road has been widened to 11 meters and is being blacktopped using asphalt technology.

Rautah-Atreya JV was awarded a contract worth Rs 281.4 million in August 2022 to blacktop the Jomsom-Kagbeni section of the Beni-Jomsom-Korala road, a national pride project. According to Sanjay Bhatta, the project manager for the contractor company, they have already applied the prime coat on two kilometers of road in the Eklebhatti area.

"We have placed the prime coat along two kilometers of the road section," Bhatta stated. "We imported bitumen and managed the necessary equipment for blacktopping the entire road section."

The task of preparing the base and sub-base has been completed, and preparations are underway to blacktop the Jomsom-Kagbeni section within the current fiscal year. The company, which was awarded an eighteen-month contract, started blacktopping the road after receiving repeated warnings from the Beni-Jomsom-Korala road project to confiscate the deposit and blacklist the contractor if the work was not completed on time.

Project chief Dhruba Kumar Jha reported that 75 kilometers of the 110-kilometer road connecting Jomsom to the Korala border in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China have been graveled. Additionally, almost 85 percent of the 25-kilometer Charang-Chhoser section has been completed. Jha informed RSS that all sections connecting the Jomsom-Korala road will be graveled after the upgradation of this section. -- RSS