The Bhutanese Leading the way.
After missing numerous deadlines for completion the Minister for Works and Human Settlement Lyonpo Dorji Wangdi said she had been assured by project DANTAK that the bypass would be completed by June 2018.
She said currently the formation cutting was done but the ‘full formation cutting’ had to be done to push down the elevation of the road. She said the aim of DANTAK was to finish it by August 2017.
The plan is to then do black top paving by October 2017.
She said then the other major obstacle would be the three bridges of which the shortest bridge was already done. The midsized one would be done by November or December this year. She said the final phase would be the construction of a 145 meter long bridge which would be only completed in June 2018 only after which the bypass would be completed.
She said that the bridge could have been done earlier but there were delays by DANTAK in issuing the tender which has only recently been given to an Indian contractor.
Lyonpo said that she told DANTAK that it must stick to the June 2018 timeline and keep its word.
The minister explained that a lot of the delay was down to a 900 meter hard rock stretch and very difficult cliff formations that took more than a year.
She said that given the Chukha dam was nearby full scale blasting could not be done and so only controlled blasting could be done which further slowed down work.
