Amid lockdown, more than 35% work begun of $413 mn major irrigation project
Kolkata: With special permission granted by the Mamata Banerjee government, the state Irrigation and Waterways department has initiated more than 35 percent of the total work of the West Bengal Irrigation and Flood Management Project in just four months since its inception in February despite the nationwide lockdown.
The entire project, worth Rs 2,931 crore ($413 million), was taken up by the state government following an agreement with the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for better irrigation and flood management in the Damodar Valley Command Area (DVCA) in Purba and Paschim Burdwan, Bankura, Hooghly and Howrah districts that will benefit 27 lakh farmers in these districts.
The Bengal government has already sent a report to the Centre and other concerned authorities stating the success in initiating the work worth around Rs 1,094 crore ($145 million) despite the Covid lockdown.
Giving specifics, a senior official of the department said around Rs 996 crore ($132 million) out of around Rs 1,094 crore is directly linked to the field job that includes strengthening of embankments and desiltation of rivers while the remaining is to develop infrastructure to monitor the whole work. A Management Information System (MIS) is also being developed to monitor the project's progress.
"The matter will also be placed by the officials of the state Irrigation and Waterways department before the top brass of DEA and AIIB during the scheduled tripartite video conference on Thursday morning. DJ Pandian, Vice-President of AIIB, Sameer Kumar Khare, Additional Secretary of DEA will be attending the video conference in which the state government will be represented by Joint Secretary of the Irrigation and Waterways department Debasish Sengupta and Project Director Subir Laha. Such a review meeting is scheduled to take place four times a year but this one just after the lockdown period is of great significance," the official said.
The phase-I of the project that mainly includes embankment work has been taken up with a target of completion by June 2022 while the deadline for completing the desiltation work is June 2021.
"Special permission that was given to take up the work amid lockdown has helped the department in making progress and the endeavour is to complete the task before the deadline though at present the desiltation work cannot be carried out due to monsoon," said a state government official.
The state government is bearing 30 percent of the total project cost while the World Bank and AIIB are providing a soft loan of $145 million each, which comprises 70 percent of the project cost.
