SCLR hits another hurdle as contractor seeks rate hike

Last weeks Bombay High Court order asking residents of Netaji Nagar to vacate their premises may not bring the long-delayed Santacruz Chembur Link Road much closer to completion.

Last weeks Bombay High Court order asking residents of Netaji Nagar to vacate their premises may not bring the long-delayed Santacruz Chembur Link Road (SCLR) much closer to completion. Construction work on one section of the project has been stalled due to a squabble between the contractor and the MMRDA over price re-negotiations.

The contractor,Patel Engineering,stopped work several months ago asking for a hike in contract value to keep up with the rising prices of construction material. The MMRDA,the nodal agency for the project which is a component of the showcase Mumbai Urban Transport Project funded by the World Bank,is yet to decide on whether it will revise the contract value and,if so,by what quantum.

Work on the sections under Patel Engineering has stopped for the past six months,but Gammons work is going on, Additional Metropolitan Commissioner SVR Srinivas said. MMRDA will discuss how to resolve the issue with Patel Engineering once Metropolitan Commissioner Rahul Asthana,who is currently out of the country,is back.

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Gammon India is the other contractor in charge of the civil work of the SCLR,a crucial road project providing east-west connectivity. We are talking to the contractors to find a way out. Anyway,we havent lost much till now,considering it was the rainy season and the Netaji Nagar issue was also unresolved, Srinivas said.

Last week,the Bombay High Court ordered the 64 residents of Netaji Nagar to vacate their premises and hand them over to the MMRDA by October 10. They were also directed to accept the alternative accommodation being offered,clearing a major hurdle for the SCLR project.

The World Bank had in its report in May expressed the need to resolve the payment issue with Patel Engineering,noting progress in this contract was only 47.5 per cent. Assuming that all encumbrances are removed and work starts from September 2011 after the monsoon,its expected that all works on this section can be completed prior to the start of next monsoon in June 2012, the World Bank had said in the report.

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