Repairs to sections of Road No. 13 North in Vientiane province using the government’s Road Maintenance Fund are continuing while the work financed by the World Bank has been completed.

The Head of Vientiane province’s road management unit, Mr Somsanouk Phoutthavong, clarified details of the work carried out to the Vientiane Times when newspaper staff visited the worksite on Saturday.

“The repair work financed by the World Bank was completed in December, but now we are continuing road repairs under finance from the Road Maintenance Fund,” he said.

Road No. 13 runs through Vientiane province for a distance of 202km, from the km44 to km246 markers.

After the road became degraded in a number of places, the World Bank came up with the original grant financing of about 27 billion kip for the urgent repair of the sections that were the most seriously damaged.

The repairs began in March last year and were completed in December. There were four contracts involved covering 272 sections of road over a total length of 27km.

Four contractors carried out the repairs, namely Panyathilath Road-Bridge Co., Ltd. Bounhome, Thavixok, and Vongsayfa.

The first contract involved the stretch of road from km44 to km86 which included the repair of 65 sections over a total length of 5.97km. The second, from km86 to km126, involved 81 sections amounting to 8.3km. The third, from km126 to km154, required 85 sections of 7.4km in length to be repaired. The fourth contract covered repairs from km154 to km171 and included 41 sections over a total length of 5.46km.

The government is providing 31.4 billion kip for the current road repairs, 8.6 billion kip of which was used in the last wet season. The work involved repairs to 81 sections of road with a combined length of 10.8km.

Road repairs using the remaining 22.7 billion kip from the government’s budget are now being carried out by three of these contractors. The exception is Panyathilath Road-Bridge Co., Ltd.
They are repairing the other 231 sections still to be done on the 202km stretch of road running through Vientiane province.

This repair work is also divided into four contracts with Bounhome Company being responsible for two of them. The contracts cover a distance of about 19km. According to Mr Somsanouk, the work is now 60 percent complete, and is set to be finished by the end of next month.

By Vientiane Times
(Updated February 18, 2013)