KON TUM — Provincial Road 675A, the section that passes through Kon Tum Province, from Sê San 3 Hydroelectric Plant to National Road 14C, remains incomplete and barely usable.

Construction of the road, with total investment of VNĐ 530 billion, (US$23.4 million), was expected to be finished by June 2014.

The project was approved by the Kon Tum Province People’s Committee seven years ago, with the People’s Committee being the investor, and there were three constructors -- Trường Long JSC Co., Duy Tân Investment & Development JSC Co. and Tuấn Dũng Co. Ltd.

For the most part of the road, only the rough grading of the roadbed has been completed and the first layer of gravel stones laid; in particular, on the section from Ia Tơi DSpring to Sê San 3, only the grading process was done, Nông Nghiệp Việt Nam newspaper (Việt Nam Agriculture) reported.

In addition, construction was poor on many portions of the road that passed over rivers or springs, which meant the road could easily be washed away by floodwaters.

During the hot days, wind and passing traffic kick up the dust and sand, making for an unpleasantly suffocating atmosphere; while during the monsoon, mud and floodwaters rendered the road hardly passable.

“I had barely crossed a kilometre when my bike’s tyres got punctured by the sharp gravel. A flat tyre occurs often. In the rainy season, the road is cut off at many sections. The road is nowhere near finished,” a frequent driver on this road, Hoàng Tuấn Anh, said frustratingly.

Along the road, only a handful of machines are seen operating. Most are grading the sections that got overrun with floodwater as a temporary measure to keep the route accessible.

Nguyễn Hữu Dụ, deputy head of Sa Thầy District’s Investment & Construction Management Board, said merely a quarter of the total investment, or VNĐ139 billion ($6 million), was disbursed to all three constructors.

Also, according to Dụ, the designed length and width of the road is 58km and 3.5m, respectively, but in reality, the road is only 54km long since the remaining 4km have already been used for a road leading to hydropower plant Sê San.

Due to insufficient funds, only the road surface and water drainage system have been completed, plus, only sections of high slope were covered with asphalt. 

Bridges have not been constructed. A temporary dirt road was built so vehicles could cross the rivers, but the floodwaters have washed it away.

“This road was not used much earlier; it mostly serves national defence purposes. If the road is completed, it will be used for the increasing traffic from Ia Dom Commune. However, due to disorganised investment, barely had the road’s base been laid, when it was destroyed by rainwater erosion,” Dụ said.

He also added that every year, he still had to deploy machines to carry out temporary maintenance and repairs of the road, while waiting for the next disbursement of capital from ADB funds to finish the job and hand over the works.

According to Kon Tum Province Department of Transportation, the manager and investor of the project are the Sa Thầy District authorities. Prior to construction, the department offered advice and consultancy regarding initial investment, while maintaining that construction progress or site-clearing were the investor’s responsibilities. — VNS