The road department says - ”Construction professionals have not started work now, they have said that they will proceed with the work within a few days”.
Not a day goes by without traffic jams at Gwarko for those who commute through the Koteshwar-Kalanki road section. In the morning and evening, this road is crowded. Since the day when the construction of Gwarko overpass started, the place has become unsettled.
The construction of the overpass has been started from February 2078 to be completed within two years. But it's not over yet. The construction of that section has been stopped for a month. The reason for this is that the contractor company in charge of the construction of the overpass has not worked.
Even before, the work was stopped for four months due to rain. The quality, research and development center under the road department said that construction workers have not worked for the last one month. After the rain, there was intermittent work in between, but the speed did not increase.
The previous director of the center, Prabhat Kumar Jha, had said that the construction industry had been left without contact by stopping the work of the overpass. He had sent two 'notices to correct' to the builder saying that the businessman had left the job without giving any information. He was transferred to the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport from the Center only on Sunday. He has appeared in the ministry. The project claims that some of the works done by the builders are flawed.
Ashish-Samanantar-Religer JV has taken the overpass contract for 17 crore 6 lakh 88 thousand rupees. Although it is a joint contract, the work is being done by Railiger Construction. According to the initial agreement, the construction of the overpass should be completed by February 12, 2080. But after the work was not completed within that time, the deadline was extended for the second time until June 2081. As the work could not be completed within that time, the deadline was last December 9. If it was not completed within that time, the work was carried out with a fine from December 10. After the builder promised to complete the work by the end of March, the project was fined. After imposing the fine, the speed of work has slowed down.
Arjun Prasad Aryal, Deputy Director General and Spokesperson of the Road Department, said that there was some delay in the construction due to the fact that the businessmen were fined for not working within the specified time. "The construction business has already said that they will work, after the news that the contracting company is not in contact with the project, they were able to understand from the department," he said If not, he says.
Vishal Karki, project manager of Ashish-Samanantar-Religer JV, claimed that the working environment was not there because of the director of quality, research and development center. "The current project chief did not believe in the work done by the previous project chief (director) and repeated the work," he said. Karki is accused of not being allowed to work by showing bad things over and over again. "We are delaying the construction by saying that the design of the existing craft barrier is not valid," he said Jha claims that he did not interfere in the matter of work. "We have to check the quality of the same as prescribed by the center," he said, "We have not asked to do a new test, we have only asked to test the existing issues, we have also asked to correct the mistakes made by the builders."
Project Manager Karki said that 44 crores have been spent on the overpass so far. "It is estimated that another 15 million will be needed," he said. He said that there is a problem when the contracting agency does not create a working environment when they are ready to work even after paying the fine.
The construction progress of the overpass is 82 percent so far. 13 months into the contract, work was halted due to problems with the design. It has been contracted under the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) model. Therefore, the work from design to construction should be done by the contracting company. After technical problems were noticed during construction, the businessmen stopped the main work and 'revised the design'. Because of this, the businessman claims that the construction has been delayed. The project had claimed to put the overpass into operation before Dasain. A 540 meter long overpass will be built with a
traffic structure. Even though the work of making the ramp has been started by placing concrete panels and special type of 'Polymer Reinforcement' at the sides, it has not been completed. The ramp will be up to 10.2 meters high. The center says that the 40-meter ramp built towards Satdobato should be removed and put back. The Center says that there are problems with the work that has already been completed. Although it is mentioned as a flyover in the budget, it is an overpass, said Pradeep Bhandari, Senior Divisional Engineer of Quality, Research and Development Center.
