Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Sundarijal: The tunnel construction works of the Melamchi Water Supply Project have not started yet even after six months of the laying of foundation stone of the project by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. PM Nepal had laid the foundation stone in Sundarijal, the last point of the tunnel, on August 3.
Tunnel construction works have not started even in Sundarijal though it was said that tunnel works would be started from eight places soon after the laying of the foundation. The locals have been padlocking the site office of the project for the past six months saying that the foundation stone was laid in Sundarijal of Kathmandu instead of Helambu of Sindhupalchok, the entry point of the tunnel. The locals have declared that they will not allow digging the tunnel from any of the sites of the district saying their demands were not addressed.
As the digging of tunnel has been in confusion, the China Railway 15 Bureau Corporation and China CMIIC Corporation workers have also left Sundarijal. Although the contractor company had said it would complete the works in four years and four months, the deadline may be extended as no works have been done in six months. The contract mentions that the tunnel would be completed and water released in Sundarijal by December 2013. The tunnel construction is an important work, which constitutes 27 percent of the total work.
Although construction was to start in 2002, it was postponed for five years after the donors World Bank, Norway and Sweden backtracked from the project and the works restarted with Asian Development Bank cooperation on a condition to give the drinking water management of the Kathmandu Valley to the private sector. A 26.014 km tunnel is needed to bring water of the Melamchi River from Helambu of Sindhupalchok to Sundarijal of Kathmandu. The project has already constructed project access road.
The Melamchi project was started in 1998 with a view of supplying clean drinking water to increasing population of Kathmandu valley. Admitting that the tunnel works were delayed, Executive Director of the Melamchi Project Hari Prasad Sharma told that lengthy process of acquiring license for the explosives needed for the project delayed the tunnel construction. He told that 1,100 tonnes of explosives is required to construct tunnel and the project is preparing to bring other explosives and materials from Lhasa and Hyderabad. “As soon as the explosives arrive, the tunnel works will be started from eight places simultaneously, he added.
Source: Gorkhapatra, January 26, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment