On 8 March, rain turned the road into a muddy mess and brought traffic to a complete halt at Daunne on the Narayanghat-Butwal section of the East-West Highway. According to Nawalparasi District Traffic Police Inspector Kushal Bartaula, passengers in buses and small vehicles were stuck in the jam for hours due to the mud.

As part of the Narayanghat-Butwal road expansion and upgrading project, concrete paving is currently underway on the approximately 14-kilometer Daunne stretch. But with work not completed on time, travelers on the East-West Highway have been suffering for seven years. At the slightest rain during monsoon this section turns into mud, while in winter dust has been tormenting travelers.

Narayanghat-Butwal Road Project (Eastern Section) information officer Shiva Khanal says concrete paving is underway on both the western and eastern sections of the Daunne road to prevent the suffering from repeating next year. The eastern side of the Daunne section covers four kilometers and the western side ten kilometers.

According to Khanal, 2.7 kilometers of paving on the eastern section is complete, with work ongoing on the remaining 1.3 kilometers. “Work is progressing at 40 meters per day on the eastern section. At this pace paving will be completed by mid-May this year, with the entire work planned to finish by mid-June,” he says.

According to the project’s western section information officer Bikas Khanal, a 2.8 kilometers stretch on the western side has already been blacktopped, but work is ongoing on only three of the remaining 7.2 kilometer section that still need to be paved.

On the Narayanghat-Butwal section running from Gaindakot in Nawalparasi to Butwal in Rupandehi, the project’s target is to complete road expansion and upgrading by the end of the current fiscal year (mid-July), apart from road safety work such as road markings, signboard construction, tree planting on both sides of the road, and painting. The total length of the Narayanghat-Butwal road section is 113 kilometers.

Road expansion and upgrading was started by dividing the route into two parts – the eastern section from Narayanghat to Daunne (65 kilometers) and the western section from Daunne to Butwal (48 kilometers). Work is underway to expand the two-lane road into four lanes on a 29 km section, six lanes on the 70 km section passing through market areas, and three lanes on the 14-kilometer Daunne stretch. Expansion and upgrading work is complete everywhere except Daunne. All 211 culverts on the eastern section have been built. Of 253 culverts on the western section, two at Daunne remain to be constructed.

The Department of Roads had started the Narayanghat-Butwal road expansion and upgrading work from 13 April 2019 with the aim of completing it by mid-August 2022. But project officials say work was not completed on time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tree felling, delays in relocating electricity poles, water pipelines, local obstruction, labor problems, and the contractor company’s sluggishness. The Department of Roads has extended the contractor’s deadline four times, first to mid-August 2023, second to mid-August 2024, third time to 24 July 2025, and fourth time to 23 July 2026.

China Construction Pvt Ltd has taken the road expansion and upgrading work on contract for Rs 16.99 billion, with the Gaindakot-Daunne (eastern section) costing Rs 9.13 billion and the Daunne-Butwal (western section) costing Rs 7.86 billion.