Bitumen shortage halts road construction in Nepali capital

Construction and maintenance work in many roads of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu Valley, have been halted due to lack of bitumen, officials in the division of the Department of Roads (DoR) said Friday.

"All work has stalled because the sole distributor of bitumen in Nepal has not cared to provide it," an engineer at the divisional road office of Kathmandu Sunil Poudyal told reporters.

Chief of the Kathmandu road office Pradeep Raj Panta said the DoR has been facing the lack of bitumen since long because of the supplier's monopoly.

"We cannot finish our work because he does not supply on time," he said, adding that while everything else was ready for completing,it was the lack of bitumen that was holding up the work.

"At least 40 million Nepali rupees (571,428 U.S. dollars) of the DoR's budget will be put in the freezer if the project could not be completed in time," he said, adding that DoR faced the same problem last year.

In Nepal, bitumen is majorly relying on import. The road construction work speeds up in June and July as the Nepali fiscal year ends by mid of July.

If the budget allocated for the last fiscal year is not spent on time, it will be frozen in the new fiscal year.

Source: Xinhua