Agartala: The second wave of Covid-19 has hit the ongoing work of the new terminal of Maharaja Bir Bikram (MBB) Airport here, delaying the formal operations in the new building at least for another three months, Airport Authority of India (AAI) officials said on Friday.
According to reports, infrastructure development work of the airport is almost complete. But since a large number of staff and workers got infected with coronavirus, authorities had to suspend the work. Moreover, it is assumed that the statutory inspection and auditing of the infrastructure after completion would be delayed due to the Covid situation.
“Last year, the work was delayed for six months due to Covid but even then the target was to make the new terminal operational by this month. The new variant of Covid-19 has infected a large number workers in the past 24 hours and as a result, we had to stop the work and send the infected persons for treatment and others for isolation,” said a senior official of AAI, adding that even if everything goes well at least for the next one month, work cannot start in full swing.
“Nobody knows the situation of the country in the next two months. The repeated rescheduling of works has increased the cost and slapped financial burden on us. We cannot blame anybody for the situation but only can wish for fast improvement of the situation,” the officer said.
He pointed out that MP Pratima Bhoumik has opened a most modern apron in the new terminal built at the cost of Rs 48 Cr. The apron has included pushback bays for parking for six Airbus 321-category aircraft with four aerobridges. Apart from that, all other auxiliary service facilities and customer amenities have already been put in place in the newly built terminal.
The AAI has installed two megawatt capacity solar power plants for energy requirements of the newly built terminal. The initial energy assessment of the new terminal was estimated little more than two megawatt daily for illumination, cooling, water supply and other electrical device operations at the airport.
24/04/21 Biswendu Bhattacharjee/Times of India
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