Road: People of Korphu gewog in Trongsa are unhappy with the progress of blacktopping of their gewog centre (GC) road.

Villagers allege that only about 30 percent of the work has been completed as of now. “We are worried that the contractor might not be able to complete the remaining work on time,” a villager said.

The 19.5kms GC road starts from the Trongsa-Zhemgang highway at Reotala.

People at the site can be seen working hard these days and they admit that they are behind schedule. Druk Lhayul construction executes the work.

Contractor’s site engineer, D.P Rai, said they are carrying out road widening work and it is about 80 percent complete now.

He said they could not work as per their schedule because of monsoon rain. “There was continuous heavy rainfall leading to numerous landslides along this stretch.”

The site engineer said they started the work on April 15 but had to stop from May. “There was heavy rainfall after that till August,” he said.

He also said they could not bring their machineries at the site because of the roadblock at Dzongkhalum which lasted until a week ago.

D.P Rai said road widening work is in full swing and  that they are also expecting the machineries to reach the site by November 15. “Materials and workers are at the site,” he said. “We are all set to start permanent works once the machineries reach the site.”

He also said there were numerous landslides along the GC road and they are still clearing it. “We may have to ask for time extension as we might not be able to complete the work on time.”

D.P Rai said Reotala bridge will be hurdle for them to carry out the work on time since they need to take their machines to the other side of the bridge.

The contract period for blacktopping the GC road is 24 months. Contract period started from April 2016.

With three gewog centres falling on highways, Korphu GC road is one of the last GC roads to be black topped in Trongsa. Nubi GC road blacktopping is ongoing.

Nima Wangdi | Nimshong

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