KATHMANDU: The India-Nepal Joint Project Monitoring Committee (JPMC) meetings held on Sunday reviewed three India-funded projects in Kathmandu.
The projects included projects such as 10 roads in the Terai, a housing reconstruction project (50,000 houses) and reconstruction in the education sector.
The Indian delegation led by Piyush Shrivastava, Joint Secretary (Northern Division) of the Ministry of External Affairs of India co-chaired the meetings with his counterparts Gopal Sigdel Joint Secretary, Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport of Nepal and Shiva Hari Sharma, Secretary, National Reconstruction Authority, Government of Nepal.
In February 2016, the Government of India committed NR 800 crores for the construction of 10 roads (divided into 14 packages/contracts) with a total length of 306 km in Nepal’s Terai region.
A statement issued by the Embassy of India today said that these roads connect the East-West Highway to the Indian border thereby increasing the ease of connectivity between the peoples of two countries.
Seven out of the fourteen packages have already been completed while a few short stretches on these seven roads are yet to be completed due to Right of Way (RoW) issues, including land acquisition and utility shifting issues such as shifting of electricity poles and water pipelines.
Likewise, in May 2016, Nepal and India had signed a Memorandum to cooperate in the implementation and execution of the Project in Nepal and the above 14 packages are part of this understanding between the two sides.
Out of the government of India’s committed amount of NR 800 crore, an amount of NR 450 crores have already been released to the government of Nepal. A check of NR 71 crores has been handed over today.
Meanwhile, India and Nepal also held the Joint Project Monitoring Committee meetings to review the progress of India-supported Post-Earthquake reconstruction on 8 March 2020 in Kathmandu.
The meeting recalled commitments made at the highest political level for implementation of India-supported post-earthquake reconstruction efforts in four sectors – Housing, Education, Culture and Health in Nepal.
The meeting also noted with satisfaction that the Prime Ministers of both the countries had witnessed, via video conferencing, the remarkable progress in Government of India assisted post-earthquake housing reconstruction project in Nepal on 21 January 2020 by video conference.
Similarly, in the education sector, the meeting expressed satisfaction at the progress achieved in the reconstruction of multi-hazard and disaster-resilient 70 schools and one library in Nepal.
Comment