The commissioning of the 10.24-km-long phase-2 of the monorail from Wadala to Jacob Circle’s will be delayed further owing to non-availability of track switching equipment and pending civil work.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) had missed several deadlines and promised to start it by mid-2016. The switching manufacturer Scoomi engineering is not able to deliver the switches as it has incurred financial loss and its manufacturing unit is shut.
“We are yet to receive switches from Scoomi engineering and it has delivered one out of the two switches required to function the monorail. We are told that due to Scoomi running into financial loss it has not been able to deliver what it has promised. The work order for manufacturing switches is already given to Scoomi and now it is liable to pay the penalty to the MMRDA for the delay which will depend on the extra time period it takes to deliver them,” said metropolitan commissioner, U.P.S. Madan.
Switch is equipment, which is required for the monorail to change tracks.
The total cost of the project, according to MMRDA is Rs 2,460 crore and the work on it was started around seven years ago. Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Scoomi from Malaysia with MMRDA are carrying out the work on the monorail.
“90 per cent of the civil work is complete on the site, but we are yet to install grider-beam over railway lines of the Currey road station. We have requested Central Railways to grant us blocks for carrying out the remaining civil work. We hope to get them soon for completing the reaming civil work. Once the civil work is completed, we will start with the electrification work,” said additional metropolitan commissioner Sanjay Khandare.
