The delay in the construction of the Mahakali Bridge is due to procedural complications in the construction of the dam and the access to road along.
The work on the bridge was affected after floods in the Mahakali River in the first week of last October. Although the work of the bridge has been sporadic since then, the construction of the dam has not started yet.
Kishore Raj Pandey, an engineer at the Kumar Shrestha Construction Company and the China Fuel Construction Company (CFC) JV, who was entrusted with the construction of the bridge, said that the financial issues were not resolved due to a lack of 'variation order'. "Even though the design was changed on March 8, the work was delayed due to a lack of 'variation order'," said Engineer Pandey.
"Now the rains are approaching and it is affecting the work," he said. "Other construction is underway." The floods in Mahakali last May and October had caused a loss of over Rs 200 million to the construction company.
Similarly, more than four kilometers of roads have been blacktopped of the seventy-eight-kilometer six-lane access road along the bridge. The bridge project, which is being constructed at a cost of Rs. 3.66 billion, has already achieved 76 percent financial progress.
The locals of the Mahakali area have been pressuring for the speedy construction of the project, which is expected to make a leap in the economic prosperity of the far west.
The plan is to build 5,400 meters dam on both sides of the bridge. The construction of the bridge started from Bhadau in 2017 and was affected twice due to the COVID-19 epidemic.
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