CM prod for airport terminal

Calcutta: Mamata Banerjee on Monday inspected the integrated Calcutta airport terminal under construction and asked the authorities to prevent further delay in finishing the Rs 2,600-crore project that has missed one deadline and is set to miss another.
“This is a very good project. Please try to complete it in time,” the chief minister told workers at the site with folded hands. “Aapnara shobai bhalo kore mon diye kaaj korun (All of you please work properly and attentively).”
The initial deadline of the project had been August 2010, which was later deferred to December 2011. But there is hardly any chance of the revised deadline being met, prompting the authorities to set March 2012 as the fresh target.
As if on cue, airport director B.P. Sharma announced soon after Mamata’s visit that an additional 1,000 workers would be engaged in September to expedite work on the 180,000sq m terminal with a projected capacity of handling 20 million passengers annually.
Now, 5,200 workers of ITD-ITD Cem, the Indo-Thai consortium that was awarded the contract in 2008, and the Airports Authority of India are working on the project.
“In September, when work on interior design and facilities will start, another 1,000 workers will be deployed,” said Sharma.
Calcutta airport desperately needs the integrated terminal as the existing ones are inadequate to handle the surging number of fliers. The domestic terminal, which makes a mess of handling 10,000 fliers a day, almost reached a breaking point last summer when the daily passenger count shot up to 14,000.
02/07/11 The Telegraph

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Categories: airports aug 2011