Kathmandu, Dec. 30: Due
to the sluggish progress in tunnel construction, the Melamchi Water Supply
Project (MWSP) will fail to achieve it's yet another target to supply the water
of Melamchi River from Sindhupalchowk to the capital city.
Although Executive
Director of the Melamchi Water Supply Development Project Ram Chandra Devekota
in October had claimed that the tunnel construction would be completed by
mid-January 2018, the existing statistics negated it.
The tunnel construction
work is very slow with about 12 metre progress made in a day since September
this year.
As about 532.3 metres
of tunnel is still to be constructed, at least 45 more days are needed to
complete the construction of tunnel, and many more days to prepare the tunnel to
get ready to flow the water up to the Water Treatment Plant (WTP) at
Sundarijal.
The total length of the
tunnel is 27,584.5 metres.
The project has already
failed to meet two deadlines set by the government. The then Prime Minister
Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda last year had promised to deliver the water from
to Kathmandu by the end of September this year.
The national pride
project was unable to materialise the PM's promiaw as well as the direction of
the Development Committee of the erstwhile parliament had directed the
government to complete the project and begin water distribution in the
Kathmandu Valley by October 2017.
But the project missed
the deadlines.
It has been delayed by a decade, and its deadline has been extended multiple times
in the past couple of years. According to the second revised date, the project
should have been completed by September 2016.
But, the devastating Gorkha Earthquake in 2015 and
border blockade imposed by India had created the shortage of fuel and
construction materials and the deadlines were pushed ahead.
The MWSDP authorities said that the work was delayed because of the
age-old machinery which caused frequent breakdowns during work.
In the first phase, the project aims to bring 170 million litres of
water per day from the Melamchi River to Kathmandu, and in the second phase,
another 340 million litres of water per day will be brought to the Kathmandu
Valley from Yangri and Larke Rivers.
The Asian Development Bank funded project has completed the pipe laying
works in more than 700 kilometres of 730 km.
The Project Implementation Directorate (PID) of the Kathmandu Valley
Water Supply Improvement Project which is responsible for the pipe laying and
distribution part of the project has already tested a significant part of the
distribution system with the water from the Bagmati River.
The US$ 355.4 million project is being developed by the government with
financial support of $145 million from the Asian Development Bank.
Progress at tunnel construction
Total length – 27,584.5 metres
Construction in October – 199.6 metres
Construction in November – 574.5 metres
Construction in December – 363.1 metres
Average progress in tunnel construction – 12 metres/day
Total tunnel construction by the end of 2017 – 27,052 metres
To be constructed – 532.3 metres
Source: MWSP
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