Last Saturday, a passenger jeep plunged off the Chisapani cliff, killing three people. Jeep driver Harka Kami and passengers Ram Bahadur Shahi and Gopal Salami Magar died on the spot. The vehicle was heading for Shubhakalika from Surkhet.

The road, which wraps around the cliffside in Haudi village of Shubhakalika Rural Municipality-6, is quite narrow and dangerous. Deputy Superintendent of Police Jayashwar Rimal said the road where the accident occurred is a rough one constructed using heavy equipment.

On June 8, another jeep met with an accident at Serachaur of Raskot Municipality-2, killing Man Bahadur Shahi and his wife. The vehicle fell off the road as the driver had deboarded the vehicle without turning the engine off.

“My parents were heading for Manma, the district headquarters of Kalikot, on some personal business. The jeep skidded off the narrow road due to the utter negligence of the driver,” said 17-year-old Paras Shahi, son of the deceased.

Paras now has to shoulder the responsibility of his younger brother and a disabled older sister.

Kalikot, a remote hill district in Karnali Province, is notorious for road accidents. According to the District Police Office, a total of 78 road accidents have occurred in Kalikot over the past three fiscal years killing 30 people and injuring 133 others.

“Road accidents have become more frequent in Kalikot,” said Subaraj Bam, the information officer at the District Police Office. “Seventeen road accidents were reported in the fiscal year 2020-21, while 25 road accidents occurred in the year 2021-22. In the current fiscal year, as many as 36 road accidents, involving mainly jeeps, have occurred in the district.”

Bam stressed the need for a collaborative approach to minimise road accidents. “The local government, police administration and drivers must work hand in hand to reduce road accidents,” he said.

According to the District Traffic Police Office, poor road conditions, carelessness of drivers, drink driving, carrying passengers beyond the vehicles’ capacity and driving without a license are the major causes behind the increasing cases of road accidents in Kalikot.

Most of the rural roads are constructed using bulldozers and excavators and without proper engineering surveys. The district administration accuses the local governments for giving undue priority to rural roads without studying topography.

“After the local elections of 2017, the people’s representatives kept road construction as their top priority. The local units constructed roads without environmental impact assessments and proper engineering surveys. Most accidents in Kalikot occur on such roads,” said Chief District Officer Jora Singh Majhi, who is also the chairman of the district natural disaster management committee.

According to Majhi, the district administration has imposed a nighttime ban on vehicles on the road citing dangerous road conditions. “The jeep accident in Shubhakalika on Saturday had occurred at around 11pm. Had they not travelled at night on such a risky road, the accident may have been averted,” he said.

Kalikot is a hill district with difficult terrain. The local units haphazardly constructed rural roads without carrying out proper engineering surveys and environmental impact assessments. These roads are prone to accidents as they are quite narrow, rough and steep.

However, it’s not only rural roads that are difficult to drive on. The Surkhet-Jumla road section of Karnali Highway that passes through the middle part of Kalikot and Karnali corridor road is also both narrow and difficult, say drivers.

While poor road conditions are the major contributor to road accidents in Kalikot, drivers allege that inefficient monitoring by the traffic police is also one of the reasons behind unsafe road travel. “The traffic police are indifferent to maintaining road safety. Their only concern is to extort transport workers under various pretexts,” Bharat Karki, a jeep driver, told the Post. “Traffic police intercept vehicles for no reason, take drivers aside and ask for money even when we have all the essential documents.”