KATHMANDU: Three months into its blacktopping by the Kathmandu Metropolitan City, the Amitav Buddha road in the area of the UNESCO world heritage site, Bouddhanath, has been damaged.

The road leading to Bauddha Chaitya through Mahankal and the heritage road from Tusal is full of potholes filled with water at many places, said Nayan Kumar Lama, executive director for the Bauddhanath area development committee.

“Negligence and financial irregularities on development work have led to this. The road lacked quality work. Although the committee allocated budget three times to blacktop the road, the metropolis did it itself,” he said.

Before the blacktopping, the road was repaired with the budget released by the committee.

As a result, wrong message has spread in view of tourism while visiting tourists and devotees on a journey to the area to worship at Bouddhanath Chaitya have been affected, said local entrepreneur Mangal Kumar Shrestha.

The approximately one kilometer road was blacktopped at the cost of Rs 90 million. Former chairperson of the KMC-6 Dipendra Kumar Lama blamed lack of quality work on the part of the contractor for the damaged road.

The ward has asked chief of the construction department of the metropolis, Ram Thapa to get the road reconstructed by halting the release of payments to the contractor, he said, adding that doing other things more than that is beyond authority of the ward.

Chair of the metropolis-6 which looks after affairs of the area, Bhuvan Lama said he would take up the matter in the executive meeting of the metropolis, stating that the road was constructed before he was elected as the ward chair.

However, the department chief Ram Thapa could not be reached for comments.

RSS