Sindhuli: The under construction Dharan-Chatara-Sindhuli-Hetauda road section of Madan Bhandari Highway has reached the final stage.

According to the Eastern and Western Project office of the highway, work on both east and west sections of the highway is in full swing and more than 85 percent work has been completed so far.

Arjun Aryal, chief of the western section of the project, said that work on the road has progressed by 85 percent and the team is working at a fast pace. He said that a bridge was under construction in Bagmati and construction of a six-kilometer road in Sindhuli district headquarters was hampered due to obstruction resulting in the delay of the construction of a bridge at Gwang River of the district. He said that there is still obstruction in the construction of 6-km road from Khattar to Dhura Bazaar in Kamalamai Municipality-4, the district headquarters of Sindhuli. “Otherwise, blacktopping of the roads in many sections has been completed,” he added.

Out of the total 115 kilometers of road from Bhiman of Kamalamai Municipality of Sindhuli to Hetauda Metropolitan City-6 Chaughada of Makwanpur in the western section, there is still a dispute in the 6-kilometers stretch in Sindhuli headquarters. “The construction work has progressed a lot in recent times,” said Project Chief Aryal. “Other than the obstructed area, construction will be completed within a month in all sections of the highway,” he added.

He said that 90 percent work on the bridge has been completed. However, it is unclear from where the road will be built from Dhura Bazaar of Sindhuli to Khattar.

Similarly, 85 percent road construction and 95 percent bridge construction work has been completed in the eastern section of the highway, said Engineer Shankar Poudel, information officer of the Eastern Section Office of the project. He said that the contract was signed for the bridge in three phases. Out of the 44 contracts in the first phase, 43 bridges have been completed except one on the Kamala River.

He said that out of 134 km road section from Basaha in Udayapur to Bhiman in Sindhuli in the eastern section, 107 km has been blacktopped. The 11 meter wide road will be blacktopped in two layers. The first layer will be 11 meters wide and the second layer will be 7 meters wide. Chief District Officer Yogendra Prasad Pandey said that the problem would be resolved soon as they are working together to resolve the 6-kilometer dispute at the Sindhuli district headquarters.