Kathmandu, February 14: The government has said that it will complete the much-delayed Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) by the coming mid-July.
Minister for Water Supply and Sanitation, Bina Magar, announced this new deadline while issuing a whitepaper on the project during a program held in the capital on Thursday (Feb 13).
According to her, the project has achieved 95.12 percent physical progress to date and the dwellers of Kathmandu dwellers will get water supplied from the project from mid-July.
According to the whitepaper, the remaining works of the project will be completed in two phases. The first phase will see the construction of cofferdam, operation of the alternative diversion and fixation of 14 water release gates. Likewise, in this phase, the main tunnel and rectification work, installation of vent shafts, fixation of instrumentation that help in monitoring of the audit tunnel and panel board will be completed.
Similarly, in the second phase, a dam alongside the cofferdam will be built apart from putting the intake weir and serpentine sediment sluice system in place
Out of a total of Rs 31.36 billion earmarked for the MWSP, Rs 28.13 billion has already been spent on the project so far.
Since November last year, Sinohydro, a Chinese firm, has been carrying out the works related to headworks and tunnel finishing, diversion tunnel, the lining of audit tunnel and finishing touches of the tunnel.
The Chinese firm was assigned for such works after Italy-based Cooperativa Muratori e Cementisti (CMC) di Ravenna abruptly terminated the project in December 2018.
