The coronavirus lockdown has impacted several existing infrastructure projects, among them is the Metro-3 corridor covering Colaba-Bandra-Seepz. This project will consist of a 33.5 km stretch entirely underground.
The tunnelling work for this metro line was expected to be completed by December 2020, though the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) is now facing a grim situation as the lack of labourers as well as the prolonged coronavirus lockdown has pushed the deadline to beyond February 2021.
Officials said that they have completed 83 per cent of the tunnelling work and 57 per cent of the overall project work for the Metro 3 line. They added that the MMRC has only been tunnelling around 600 metres per month over the past two and a half months, whereas the average monthly tunnelling speed was 1,500 metres prior to the lockdown.
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Furthermore, while there were 15,000 labourers working at the project on-site, the number had recently shrunk to 4,000. However, the number of labourers working on the project now stands at 6,000 as some of the workers have returned back to the city.
Back in 2017, the MMRC had estimated that losing even a day’s work at the site would cost Rs 4.2 crore towards the project. With this in mind, it’s barely a surprise that the project cost has surged from Rs 23,000 crore to Rs 32,000 crore.
“There has been a major disruption in the supply chain, availability of labour and even spare parts. Despite that, we have completed 45.6km of tunnelling work. While we did aim for December 2020 to complete tunnelling work, it might go beyond February 2021 now,” an MMRC official said.
The State Government’s decision to halt work of the metro car shed at the contentious Aarey forest area has also pushed the construction deadline of the Metro 3 underground line. The MVA government at the time said that it will decide on an alternative location for the car shed, though there has been no progress made on this front, causing further uncertainty about the project.
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