PRESSING ISSUES IN ROAD SECTOR DISCUSSED

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/ On March 15, a consultative meeting of road and transport sector was held to discuss pressing issues of the sector, determine getaway and solutions and submit recommendations to policy makers. In the opening, Road and Transport Minister J.Bat-Erdene emphasized that a total of 4277.3 km auto roads and 4349.2-meter long bridges were newly built in the past six years in Mongolia, which made Mongolia’s auto road network to reach 15.2 thousand kilometers. “For Mongolia, developing its auto road network is a main getaway to decentralize and expand regional cooperation and network; thus it is necessary to improve the quality of new roads and maintenance of old roads. Construction of paved roads linking seven aimags to the capital city was finished successfully. Now it is expected to complete construction of paved roads to link all aimags to Ulaanbaatar by 2020,” he added. “This year, road maintenance works are planned on some roads, including Ulaanbaatar-Darkhan and Ulaanbaatar-Nalaikh where many accidents are recorded. In foreign countries, it inspects accurately whether road disturbance and damages or other errors caused the traffic accident. Based on the inspection, the government takes a certain extent of responsibility, excluding the punishment for a driver. Mongolia needs to introduce this standard,” stressed the Minister. Sh.Gerelt-Od, senior inspector of the General Authority for Specialized Inspections, stressed that the road companies construct bad quality roads as they do their baseline engineering and geological study incompletely. “It requires thorough fulfillment of baseline study and improvement of capacity and responsibility of external inspection organization. The quality of road constructions will be improved, if auto road consultancy service, monitoring system and standards are introduced into Mongolia,” he said. M.Unurzul