The construction of Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA) has been affected because of government negligence.
The construction work of the runway, the main part of the project and parking bay in front of terminal building were stopped from Sunday.
China’s Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group has stopped construction work saying that the company has not received the payment of previously completed work.
According to the contractor company, there is a problem of cash flow on the project.
The project has been complaining in Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) for the payment of work which was completed a long time ago.
The company fails to receive the payment at a time as the ministry did not send the file to Asian Development Bank (ADB). Likewise, the project has also experienced problem in the supply of breakstone and soil.
There are conflicts in different areas as the required materials like sand, soil which were supplied from Dang, Chitwan and Butwal following delay in payment.
Due to argument between locals and contractor, the project has reached to limbo stage. Due to lack of diesel, the machine used in blacktopping the runway is not in operation.
Prabesh Adhikari, chief of the project stated that nearly NRs 20 lakh is spent daily in diesel and as the payment has not been made so the process is delayed.
According to one of the officials, if these problems are not solved shortly, then the project to complete within deadline and to bring in operation will be challenging.
“The process of taking out sand and breakstone from river will be stopped from June,” the official said, “If there is no serious concern about these matters then the project will face a major impact.”
Tourism Secretary went to visit to Vietnam with Prime Minister without submitting the file made for the payment.
“Tourism Ministry and Financial Ministry can address this problem by talking for a minutes,” said the project source, “but the ministry has not been acting responsible from the last time in the project.”
In the other side, the contractor has received timely payment from Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN). However, more than NRs 100 Million the payment through ADB has been stopped.
‘The contractor has given hope to the suppliers and workers to make payment with the hope of getting paid from the government within time. However, if the payment is not received at the time, neither suppliers work, nor the workers, ‘the project source said.
Currently, the blacktopping of the runway has reached last stage. The construction work has been stopped while only 500 meters of the runway is remaining to be blacktopped.
