Nepal maintains roads but ignores the slopes holding them up
Each monsoon, when highways close after heavy rain or traffic halts due to rock fall, we usually see only the immediate crisis.
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What often goes unnoticed is the deeper, recurring problem beneath these disruptions: Nepal’s highway maintenance system still focuses largely on pavement, while the slopes that physically support our roads receive little systematic attention.
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Nepal has already invested heavily in slope protection works, including retaining walls, wire mesh, rock bolts, drainage channels, check dams, and bio-engineering measures. Yet these systems are rarely treated as maintainable assets. These are slow but visible processes, ignored until collapse forces costly emergency intervention.
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The issue is not only maintenance, but also prioritization. Each monsoon triggers dozens of roadside landslides, yet there is little evidence that budget demonstrate systematic risk-based prioritization: distinguishing which slopes are critically unstable, which pose high economic risk, and which can be managed through low-cost preventive measures. Without such differentiation, resources are spread thinly or deployed only after failure occurs.
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Four practical steps stand out.
First, treat slopes as assets. Every retaining wall, drainage structure, rockfall barrier, and check dam should be inventoried and tracked, just like bridges.
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Second, inspect systematically. Maintenance contracts should require regular slope inspections using standard checklists, enabling early detection of warning signs such as cracking, seepage, deformation, and drainage blockage.
Third, budget for prevention. Slope work should no longer be buried under “emergency maintenance.” Routine budgets must explicitly fund mesh repair, bolt tightening or replacement, vegetation management, erosion control, and minor stabilization work.
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Finally, the integrated system is a must. Pavement and slopes are managed by the same agency yet treated as separate problems. Integrated planning improves technical outcomes and makes better use of limited public resources.
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