More than 60 percent of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s instructions to repair the roads in Kathmandu are found to have gone unheeded.

On July 11, PM Oli held a meeting with ministers, secretaries and officials, and instructed them to improve the condition of roads in the Valley, including the Chabahil-Jorpati and Kalanki-Nagdhunga sections, within 50 days. There was a follow-up meeting on September 1.

But officials at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) concluded that less than half of the PM’s instructions were implemented while the two major road sections continued to be dilapidated.

In the last two years, the Road Expansion Project repaired only 30 percent of the Chabahil-Bouddha-Jorpati road, the PMO’s findings showed. Due to the poor condition of roads, the retreat venue for the BIMSTEC Summit was changed from Gokarna Forest Resort to Hotel Soaltee Crowne Plaza.

“It’s our conclusion that 70 percent work to repair the Chabahil-Bouddha-Jorpati road remains incomplete,” said Binod Kunwar, joint-secretary at the PMO. The field visit by the PMO staff also showed that most of the road sections are littered with construction materials and riddled with potholes. Telephone and electricity cables were not removed and some of the new electric poles were not installed at the right places, the PMO found.

Few improvements were seen at the Kalanki-Nagdhunga road as well. Works like filling the potholes and removing cables and poles to facilitate road improvement remain incomplete.

The PMO has instructed officials to complete the remaining tasks soon.