Fourth Rural Development (RDP IV). Component II: Rural Roads Rehabilitation and Maintenance (RRRM) The € 10 million Rural Roads Rehabilitation and Maintenance (RRRM) Project under the EC-funded 4th Rural Development Programme (RDP IV) is scheduled for implementation over a period of four years, starting during the second half of 2011. The project will be implemented in the Western part of the country including the districts of Aileu, Ainaro, Bobonaro, Covalima, Ermera and the enclave of Oecusse. The objective of RRRM is to rehabilitate and maintain rural roads in the selected districts and to provide support in capacitating the small domestic contractors in Timor-Leste.. To ensure the sustainability of its capacity building activities, the project will provide support to selected national training institutions (IADE and SENAI) in developing their capacities in delivering comprehensive training courses for small domestic contractors and their staff and for DRBFC supervisors and contract managers regarding the planning, design, implementation and management of Labour-based rural road rehabilitation and maintenance works. RRRM will support and assist these training institutions also in their accreditation in compliance with national competency standards. The project activities will start with the identification of priority rural roads to be rehabilitated in the 1st year. An estimated 50 km would be contracted through competitive tendering amongst local Contractors who have demonstrateable experience in the field of labour-based rural works. As other Contractors will be trained by the project they will be entrusted with the rehabilitation of specific short sections of rural roads and eventually participate in competitive tendering processes. The target for the 2nd year would be another 50 km (at the minimum) to be rehabilitated plus the routine maintenance of the earlier completed 50 km. In the 3rd year, another 50km (at the minimum) would be rehabilitated plus routine maintenance of the 100 km completed in the preceding two years. Finally, the total of around 150 km rehabilitated in the first three years would be routinely maintained in the 4th and final year. Through the training and the capacity support to the training institutions that will be provided by RRRM, around 60 contractors with an estimated 400 of their staff, and 18 DRBFC contract managers/supervisors, will be trained. This involves approximately 9,000 training-days of training. As part of the training for the contractors and their staff, trial contracts will be issued to those contractors who have successfully completed the classroom training. After the successful completion of the trial contracts the contractors can subsequently also bid for additional rehabilitation and maintenance works, following a system of competitive bidding. Altogether the RRRM project aims at rehabilitating 70 km of priority rural roads through trial contracts and a minimum of 80 km of roads through competitive bidding for which the trained contractors will be eligible to participate. Similarly, trial contracts and competitive contracts will also be awarded for routine maintenance (around 150 km in year 4 of the project). Based on the lessons learned from the TIM-Works project, training modules will be adapted and the design specifications for the rehabilitation of the road works will entail a larger degree of flexibility with relatively more investments planned for critical and vulnerable road sections. The total average investment costs per km for rehabilitation works have been estimated to US$ 40,000 (direct investment costs only). Through the provision of short-term employment opportunities in rehabilitation and maintenance works, an estimated 780,000 work-days of employment will be generated that will benefit an estimated 13,000 workers (with an average duration per worker of 60 days) and their families. Around 2/3 of RRRM's budget will be allocated to construction related activities and the remaining 1/3 will be used to implement capacity building activities for management o