Nashik: Two ongoing projects carried out by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) in the district have been hit by the exodus of migrant workers over the past month amid the rise in Covid cases.
As a result of this, the work of linking the two flyovers on the Mumbai Agra highway will not meet its deadline of April 30.
Apart from the work of linking Dwarka flyover with the new flyover being constructed opposite KK Wagh College to Jatra Hotel on the highway, NHAI has also taken up the work for widening the Sinnar -Shirdi highway last year.
Dileep Patil, the project director of NHAI said, “The fear of lockdown was prevalent among the construction workers since the beginning of March as the district administration started imposing restrictions due to the spread of Covid. So, many construction workers, who are mainly from other parts of the state and the country, had started leaving for their home towns.”
As of now, the construction works are being carried out by only 40 % of the workers.
Given the huge number of accidents and traffic snarls on the highway opposite K K Wagh College and Jatra hotel, a stretch of approximately 3.5 km, NHAI had taken up the work of constructing a flyover between these two locations in April 2018 and then linking it with the existing elevated corridor over Dwarka.
While the earlier deadline for completing this work was October 2020, the pandemic hit and the construction was delayed. Now, when it was just a matter of linking the two flyovers and throwing the elevated corridor open for traffic, the project has again been hit by the second wave of Covid.
Leave a Comment