The closure of the road has forced the locals to travel 156 km to reach Kushma, which is located just 45 km away. Locals complained that the apathy of the District Development Committee (DDC) had cost them dearly, both in terms of time and money, adding that they had been forced to shell out as much as Rs2,000 while travelling to Kushma for a mere two hours of work.

“I had to spend Rs2,500 while visiting Kushma in order to make a recommendation letter to apply for Machine Readable Passport,” said Himlal Bhusal of Huwas-9.

Likewise, Tek Bahadur Darji of Huwas-6 claimed that more than Rs10,000 had been spent during his travel to Kushma. Darji who had reached Kushma to make the citizenship certificate of his son could not get the work done even after travelling back and forth from his village thrice. “The first time around I had forgotten to bring my son’s birth certificate, the second time my name on his birth certificate and my citizenship certificate did not match,” Darji lamented, stating that Rs7,000 was spent on transport fare alone.

According to first class non-gazetted officer, Narayan Sharma of the District Administration Office (DAO), 30-50 people from the region visited the DAO to apply for passport and citizenship certificate recently.

“We feel sorry for their plight and do the best we can to relieve them of the hassle, but we cannot work beyond the rules, which compels us to return them empty-handed whenever proper procedures are not followed,” Sharma said.

Meanwhile, the DDC has not shown any concern to open the road anytime soon. According to engineer Rabindra Tiwari of District Technical Office (DTO), they had not been able to move forward, despite the allocation of the budget on time, due to the absence of the Local Development Officer (LDO). However, as the repair works on the road connecting all 14 VDCs had started after completion of tender process towards the end of Dashain, Tiwari hinted that the road might come into operation by next week.

The DTO stated that as all works pertaining to the road has to be done at once, it will take some time. According to the office, Rs1.7 million has been allocated for the repair works this fiscal year. While work on 20 km stretch of the road has already been completed, DTO said that it will take a couple of days more to complete the work on the remaining 25 km. There are four roads connecting Huwas to Kushma. Meanwhile, as repair work is yet to start on roads connecting eight

other VDCs to Kushma, the problem is far from over. “It takes three days to complete works that took only a day in the past,” said Janu Neupane of Taklak VDC.