Government of Nepal has threatened Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group (NCAACG) of China, the contractor company for Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA) as it is delaying the construction work and its license will be terminated if it fails to throttle up the speed for the construction workings by the end of October.
A written letter was dispatched to the Chinese construction group from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) a week ago mentioning that the construction work of GBIA was substandard, a national pride project located in Bhairahawa.
Officials from Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) said that the contractor is required to complete at least five per cent of physical works of the under-construction airport project every month, the tempo of the construction project is very slow.
Through the end of September this year, the deadline of the project, only 30 percent of the physical construction works are hardly accomplished at the GBIA, released the Secretary Shankar Prasad Adhikari for MoCTCA and informed that government would take necessary actions if the current contractor fails to speed up construction processes of GBIA even within the next two months.
The construction work on the project was previously halted for several months due the financial issues between the counter parties, i.e; Chinese contractor and different local contractors and workers hired by the Chinese company.
Though the payment issue was temporarily resolved in second week of March and the Chinese contractor was given March-end deadline to complete 30 per cent of construction work, the construction works could not move ahead as the payment dispute resurfaced.
Meanwhile, it has also been learnt that the government is mulling over preparing a fresh tender document to hire a new contractor for the GBIA project in case the current Chinese contractor fails to accelerate the construction works soon.
Late P.M Sushil Koirala had paved the foundation stone of the airport in December 2014 and North West had committed to complete the project by the end of December this year but continuous circumstances on several occasion had pushed the date back. The North West Construction Company took the responsibility of project completion with a budget of Nrs. 6.23 billion in 2014 but is now more likely to be terminated.
The construction cost of GBIA is estimated to be around Rs six billion and of the total cost, ADB is providing 40.5 per cent as loan and 18 per cent as grant to Nepal, while CAAN will bear the remaining cost.
