Tunnel roadworks to quicken after polls

KATHMANDU, NOV 20 -

Nepal Purbadhar Bikas Company has said it will intensify land acquisition efforts for the Kathmandu-Hetauda Tunnel Highway after the Constituent Assembly (CA) election.

The four-lane expressway will pass through Kulekhani and be 58 km long. It is expected to cut travel times between the capital and the southern plains drastically as travellers will be able to reach Hetauda in one hour.

Land acquisition has been one of the most crucial aspects of the project as it is quite difficult to obtain land from the public. According to Nepal Purbadhar, it has completed work on fixing the criteria for acquisition of land and distribution of compensation for the private land that needs to be acquired for the proposed highway.

“We are set to start the acquisition of private land for the project soon,” said Lal Krishna KC, vice-chairman and technical director of the tunnel highway project. He added that they would hold a meeting of the project’s steering committee after the election to determine the lease rate for government-owned land. The committee is headed by the secretary of the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport.

According to the project agreement, the government has to provide land falling on the route of the proposed highway to the developer Nepal Purbadhar on lease. With regard to private land, the developer is responsible for acquiring it from the locals.

Since the project is being developed with the investment of the local people too, land acquisition should not be too much of a problem, said the company. The landowners who will have to give up their land will be offered shares in the company on the basis of the value of their property. They can opt to accept cash instead.  

As per KC, the company’s Environmental Impact Assessment team will hold meetings with the locals to fix the rate of the land based on the market price.

Last week, Nepal Purbadhar began preparatory and preliminary work like setting up its field office and building an access road to the tunnel portal at Bhimphedi. It recently submitted 0.5 percent of the total estimated cost of the project to the government as performance security. “We paid around Rs 175 million as performance security last Friday,” said KC.

According to the agreement reached between the government and Nepal Purbadhar, the developer is required to submit the performance security deposit with a validity of one year within six months after signing the agreement. The highway, which will have three tunnel s along its route, is estimated to cost Rs 34.5 billion.

There will be tunnel s at Chobhar, Kulekhani and Bhainse with a combined length of 4.5 km. The company said that the construction of the highway would be started as a package including road, bridge and tunnel within the current fiscal year.

“Tunnel work will be completed within 30 months after we start construction, and the entire project will be completed by December 2016.”

Source: The Kathmandu Post