Nepal: Rural Connectivity Improvement Project

Agriculture, natural resources and rural development / Rural market infrastructure

In Nepal, the agriculture sector contributes 65-70% of employment and 35% of gross domestic product. Poverty however remains widespread in rural areas. The Government of Nepal signed the Agricultural Development Strategy (ADS) in 2015 recognizing that the agriculture sector was performing below its potential in providing food and fiber, materials for processing and manufacturing, and employment and income. The government recognized that dramatic changes in strategy were needed if the sector was to perform to its potential and raise the sectors long term annual growth rate from 3% to the government's goal of 5%. The ADS underscores access as one of the major constraints to the development of commercial agriculture value chains. Transport in many high-potential production areas is limited to basic tracks or undeveloped roads, resulting in high transport costs and losses of quality and quantity. Only 17% of the rural population in Nepal has access to all-weather roads, compared with 60% in India and 37% in Bangladesh.

The proposed project will focus on improving rural roads to all-weather standards, serving the agriculture sector and the rural population to access to market, business opportunities and benefits especially along agricultural value chains which will be a key to poverty reduction in rural areas.

Rural road conditions between the selected rural communities, productive agricultural areas, and socioeconomic centers improved

Capacity of rural infrastructure agency and road users in project areas enhanced

Output 1

There are total of 11 planned civil works contract packages under the project. Ten contract packages were awarded in 2018 in three batches and one last contract package (NCB-06) was awarded in 2019. The contract package for Rolpa district (NCB-04) under PIU 4 was terminated in February 2020 due to contractor's poor performance and negligence in construction site and re-awarded in September 2020. Construction supervision consultant (CSC), four project management consultants (PMCs) have been recruited in 2018 to support DOLI with project implementation. Capacity Development Consultant under TA were mobilized and submitted final report.

Nineteen types of Livelihood Related Skill Training for 850 persons of road corridors has been planned. Agreement signed with the Training Service Provider (Consultant) on 21 Nov 2019 to complete the task within 23 Feb 2021 (15 months). One event of beautician and one event of tailoring training have been completed and running 4 events of same training have been postponed due to COVID-19.

The project has scope to prepare Detail Project Reports (DPR) of 2000 Km of feasible and prioritized roads including 70 no. of bridges. Total number of 134 roads in five provinces, with total of 2800 Km in length have selected for Feasibility study. It has been planned to prepare DPR of 2000 Km of feasible and prioritized roads including 70 no. of bridges. Consultants have been selected and mobilized for five packages in five provinces (Province 1, Bagmati, Gandaki, Lumbini and Karnali), covering 34 districts. Detailed survey and data collection has been done by the consultants in number of roads, even though it is less than the target due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Output 2:

1,181,492 person-days employment has been generated by road construction in all project districts. Out of total, 409,736 (34.68%) skilled and 771,756 (65.32%%) unskilled. Likewise, 1,035,494 (87.64%) male and 145,998 female (12.36%) person-days employment generation has been achieved.

The project conducted 16 events of technical training to DoLI, provincial and municipal staff. Out of 16, construction supervision training (2 events), pavement design (4 events), road safety (2 events), safeguards and GESI related (1 event), exposure visit in India (1 event), social safeguards training (1 event), online training on Contract Management (1 event), Project Account online training (1 event), Online Procurement Training (1 event), Social Safeguards online clinic (1 event), Online training on GESI (1 event) were organized. Total participants of these training events were 339. Among them, 305 (89.97%) were male and 34 (10.03%) were female. Likewise, 4 (1.18%) Dalit, 96(28.32%) Janajati/Madhesi and 239 (70.5%) braman/Chhetri/Thakuri were participated in those trainings. TA Consultant has submitted its final report for capacity development of DOLI and province staffs.

14 event of road safety awareness raising sessions have been organized to community people of 14 roads. Same event of the same activities has been organized for students of same road corridor. Total participants including students in those awareness sessions were 1740 attributing to 771 (44.31%) female, 969 (55.69%) male. Ethnicity wise, 186 (10.69%) Dalit, 609(35.00%) janajati, 2 (0.11%) Muslim and 943 (54.20%) braman/chhetri/ thakuri. Participants of school student were 960 from 14 schools of 14 road corridor with 509 (53.02%) girls and 451 (46.98%) boys.

14 events of HIV/AIDs, STI, human anti-trafficking awareness-raising sessions have been organized to community people of 14 roads. The same event of the same activities has been organized for, students of the same road corridor. Total participants including students in those awareness sessions were 1,740 attributing to 771 (44%) female, 969 (56%) male. Ethnicity wise, 186 (11%) dalit, 609 (35%) janajati, and 943 (54%) brahman/chhetri/Thakuri. Participants of school student were 960 from 14 schools of 14 road corridor with509 (53.02%) girls and 451 (46.98%) boys

The project conducted 258 events of consultation meetings during project design, planning and social/public audit in all 27 road sub-projects. In total 7,543 persons participated in the consultation meetings in which 5,288(70.10%) were male and 2,255 (29.90%) were female. Out of total 7,543 participants, dalit 735 (9.74%), Aadibasi/Janjati 3,233(42.86%), muslim 153 (2.03%) and brahmin/chhetri/thakuri 3,422 (45.37%) were participated in the consultation meetings.