Airport revamp flight delayed

Calcutta: Calcutta airport is paying the price for the Red army bulldozing the civil aviation ministry into choosing a public rather than private pilot for its Rs 2,400-crore flight to modernisation.
The project, which was part of a larger privatisation plan but “remained” with the public sector Airports Authority of India following full-on protests by Citu — and off-line talks between the CPM brass and the ministry, sources said — is set to overshoot its August 2011 deadline by several months, if not a year and more.
Officials confirmed that even the bidding process for installation of some basic infrastructure was yet to take off in Calcutta while other airports — Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai — had either finished their projects ahead of schedule or were “on time”.
An AAI official said “current estimates” suggested at least six extra months would be required to finish the project, but sources at the city airport insisted it would be a miracle if the delay was restricted to some months.
The Indo-Thai consortium, ITD-ITD Cem, was awarded the project in 2008 but some of the sites are yet to be handed over to the company. “We have not been able to demolish the existing buildings because of various reasons,” the official said.
The delay in getting government clearance for the construction of a flyover from VIP Road till the main approach to the airport is being cited as one of the reasons for the project running well beyond schedule.
09/08/10 Sanjay Mandal/G S Radhakrishna/The Telegraph

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Categories: airports aug 2010