After wait of many years, the rehabilitation project of Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has been initiated.
The main concern of the airport expansion was the land acquisition. More than NRs. 1 Billion will be spent on the expansion, development and compensation of land acquisition for TIA.
Babu Ram Poudel, Chief of Air Traffic Capacity Enhancing Project stated that around Rs 1 Billion 230 Millions will be required for providing the compensation of land acquisition only. According to the project, the land of 140 Ropanis from Pepsicola chowk to Jadibuti chowk will be acquired and made under the premises of airport.
Rabindra Adhikari, Minister of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) has started distribution of compensation which was stopped very long time ago due to protest from local people. The project office acquired 140 Ropanis of land from the centre point of the runway of airport where compensation of 100 Ropani has been already distributed till now. Poudel also informed that NRs. 4 Billions has already been distributed as compensation for acquiring those 100 Ropanis of land.
95 per cent work has been done for distribution of land compensation. However, distribution of compensation had not made much progress in the past because of the local’s protests.
Local have protesting the project claiming the amount of compensation is dramatically low than the value of their lands. In order to ease the problem of land compensation, the project office had started classification at three levels and started allocating the compensation.
The process of rehabilitation work of the runway of TIA has stepped up
China National Aero Technology International Engineering Corporation, Chinese Company that holds charge of the runway rehabilitation project and the construction agreement will be signed on November 5, 2018. The proposed project was presented between Rabindra Adhikari, Minister of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) and senior officials of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
Sanjeev Gautam, Director General of CAAN stated that the upgrading work of the runway will be started from April 1, 2019.
In the first phase, the company needs to blacktop the runway of 3000 m. The renovation work will be conducted for 10 hours a day in 80 m with use of milling machine at night. During the rehabilitation, TIA will be closed for 10 hours a day. After completing the runway work, the work of “Parking bay” will be started.
CAAN has informed that TIA will remain close from evening 10 pm to 8 am morning to carry out the runway renovation work from April, 2019. It will take about 18 months to complete the overall upgrade.
Meanwhile, an official from Tourism Ministry has directed the project to complete the rehabilitation of runway as soon as possible. After upgrading TIA -the dignity of the nation will help in upgrading the arc of the airport and improve the quality of services.
