The recently widened Narayangadh-Muglin road has started to fall apart barely a month into the 32.2 km motorway came into full operation.

A 50-metre stretch of the road at Jugedi area in Chitwan has developed cracks, causing it to slip and sink. It turns out that the road contractor had used dirt to add width to the road before tarmacking it.

Unable to hold the load and pressure from the surface, the dirt fill started slipping and causing the road to gape open.

Indian construction firm, BLA, and Shrestha Construction Company of Nepal were contracted to expand the road from Aanptari to Dasdhunga.

The consultant company of the Narayangadh-Muglin Road Project has directed the two companies to immediately fix the damaged road.

Consultant engineer Pushkar Regmi said on Sunday that a simple repair was not going to resolve the problem.

The damage is serious and the road has to be reconstructed, he added.

Prabhu Joshi of Shrestha Construction Company said they were waiting for the insurance company to inspect the road before they started repairing the damaged road section.

Transportation along the Narayangadh-Muglin road opened round-the-clock from the first week of June after workers completed the first phase of black-topping work.

The road, which links Kathmandu with other parts of the country, accounts for 90 percent of Nepal’s total international trade traffic.