KOLKATA (Metro Rail News): On Thursday, July 28, a team from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) visited the Bowbazar construction site of the East-West Metro to examine the cave-in zone and its impact on the project’s advancement.
The Rs. 8,576 crore East-West Metro project, whose primary financing source is JICA, experiences numerous delays and expense overruns as a result of numerous setbacks. The most challenging hurdle is in Bowbazar’s Durga Pithuri Lane, where a tunneling disaster on August 31, 2019, led to houses collapsing and more than 700 people fleeing. Another 160 households were relocated from the same location on May 11 due to another subsidence this year. The region is now known as the “cave-in zone.”
The JICA crew, which included Koji Masuda, construction advisor, Ohguchi Rio, representative, and Vineet Sarin, chief development specialist, descended into the 25-meter-deep shaft at Durga Pithuri Lane. They asked about the safety precautions being taken for the nearby homes, several of which had developed cracks as a result of the subsidence on May 11.
The team also went to the Howrah Maidan and Mahakaran stations, which are near to the finishing status but can’t be operational due to the Bowbazar obstacle for the 2.45 km Esplanade-Sealdah part of the corridor. “This is JICA’s first visit to the Bowbazar cave-in zone”, an official informed.
