Tibet to add more roads to monasteries

Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region has announced plans to add more roads to remote monasteries and villages.

Tashi Gyatso, a senior official with Tibet's transport department, said on Friday that the region will spend 200 billion yuan (about 32.67 billion U.S. dollars) on building new roads and repairing old ones in the next six years.

He said the campaign is partly driven by the need to make monasteries more accessible. Tibet had paved roads leading to 813 registered monasteries and other religious venues by the end of 2013.

Tibet has more than 1,700 registered monasteries and venues for religious activities, with about 46,000 monks and nuns.

The region hopes to soon have blacktop roads leading into over 80 percent of townships, and to complete construction of the road linking Lhasa and Nyingchi, a prefecture in southeast Tibet that borders India.

"It could reduce the driving time from Lhasa to Nyingchi by more than two hours," said Tashi Gyatso.

The region now has 70,591 km of road and will extend it to about 110,000 km by the year 2020.

Last year, Tibet spent 12 billion yuan on road projects, up 18.8 percent year on year, and built blacktop roads into 167 villages and 21 townships.

"Tibetan people have long hoped for improvements to the region's poor transport infrastructure, which has hindered its economic and social progress," Tashi Gyatso said.

The plateau region is known as "the roof of the world," with an average altitude of over 4,000 meters, conditions which make road construction more difficult and costly than in other parts of China.