Should everything go well with the construction of the 43km road connecting Dagana with Kamichu, travel time from Dagana towards Wangdue, Thimphu and Punakha will be shortened by more than four hours by next year.

The starting point of the road is at Peling, Tseza gewog in Dagana. So far, about seven kilometres of road has been constructed. The project began last year.

However, it has been almost three days now that the works has been stopped at the site. Tseza Gup Tandin Phurba said that construction of the road had to be stopped after encountering rocky cliff. An excavator deployed at the site is not able to break the huge rock.

He added that while the gewog is not able to bring blasting materials, getting approval to transport blasting materials is a hassle.

“We’ll first try with a rock breaker machine. If not, we have no option but to blast the rock,” he said.

The rocky cliff stretches to about 50 metres. If clearing through the cliff is possible, the plan is to clear at least seven kilometres of road by the end of June.

A budget of Nu 2.24 million (M) was allocated for the project. Another 1.9M has been allocated for the financial year 2017-2018.

“If we’re able to clear the rocky cliff soon, we should be able to connect to Kamichu by end of next year,” gup Tandin said.

The completion deadline depends on budget and terrain, he added.

Nirmala Pokhrel | Tsirang