Has missed deadlines on Parwanoo-Solan sectionLabour crunch affects Shimla NH widening

Ambika Sharma

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Tribune News Service

Solan, June 8

The unavailability of adequate labour has delayed the completion of the expansion work on the 39-km Parwanoo-Solan section of the National Highway No. 5.

Given a deadline of 30 months, the work, which began in September 2015, is yet to be completed.

A major chunk of the migrant labour, who was deployed by GR Infraprojects, has left for their native states after the lockdown was imposed. Problems like delay in the availability of land, NGT directions to halt the work for a few months and design-related issues had delayed the project earlier.

No work was executed for several weeks in March and April during the lockdown and though work did resume in the last week of April, when the government permitted construction activities, the availability of labour was much less.

SM Swami, project director, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), said the work had achieved about 85 per cent physical and financial targets. “The construction of a flyover at Kumarhatti and a railway over-bridge at Jabli were under way though scant labour was seen working at the sites.”

On the other hand, the lack of tourist inflow, which had been a big impediment in the speedy completion of major works earlier, is a facilitating factor now.

The lone 936-metre one-way tunnel ahead of Kumarhatti has, however, been made functional. It would reduce the travel distance by 3.5 km.