The haphazard dumping of road blacktopping materials by the roadside along the Trongsa – Gelegphu highway have been an eyesore to the travellers. They have raised concerns saying that such is a waste of government resources.
A huge number of damaged bitumen barrels (road construction material) were carelessly kept near Wangdigang Bridge in Zhemgang for quite some time. This has raised concerns amongst travellers and passerby for wasting and dumping one of the most expensive road construction materials (bitumen) which could otherwise be put to good use. Few motorists said it has been there for almost six months without any care and some bitumen barrels are seen broken, and the oil splashed on road.
“Many bitumen barrels are damaged and kept here for many months and we don’t know who is responsible for this and we don’t see anyone taking care or having accountability. For instance, if we lose gravels on the road, DoR officials penalize us and for this uncared bitumen damages, no one seems to report or complain. I feel the government should fix the responsible individuals or agency in this case,” said Sonam Chophel, a trucker.
“In remote places, we do not have blacktopped road be it Gewog Centre or farm roads. I feel it could have been used to other areas without much waste and it could have been an immense benefit to the rural people,” added Phurpa Wangchuk, a motorist.
The project engineer of Druk Lhayel Construction said it was actually to use on the 19.5 km Korphu Gewog Centre blacktopping works in Trongsa. However, their contract had been terminated by the Department of roads in Trongsa early this year for failing to complete the works on time.
“We could not use the bitumen during the time of contract period and simultaneously we did not get timely advance payment from DoR and had a big problem in between. We accept our fault dumping and splashing our bitumen on the road because we could not keep bitumen in a proper place, barrels are broken and meantime splashed everywhere on the road,” said Kinzang Thinley, the Project engineer of Druck Lhayel Construction Company.
Recently, Zhemgang Dzongkhag environment officials have also imposed a penalty of Nu 50,000 on them for haphazard dumping of bitumen near the Wandigang riverside and asked them to restore it in the proper place.
“Today you can see, we have cleaned and shifted all the damaged bitumen barrel to the other side of the bridge and dumped there. Hereafter, I assure we won’t have any problem of splashing bitumen on Gelephu – Trongsa highway,” he added.
However, BBS learnt that more than four hundred bitumen barrels have been transported to the campsite and each barrel costs around Nu 6200.
