KOCHI: The woes of commuters passing through Kundannoor and Vyttila Junctions will continue for some more time with the government on Thursday extending the deadline for the opening of the new flyovers to March 2020.
When the construction of the six-lane 717-m Vyttila flyover, being built at a cost of `78.37 crore, was inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on December 11, 2017, the deadline for the completion was set in May 2019.
After the initial deadline elapsed, the government had extended it to December 2019. This has now been further postponed to March 2020. The officers concerned said 75 per cent of the work is complete and the entire construction will be over by March 2020.
After evaluating the progress of the flyover work at a review meeting held in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday, the chief minister asked the officers concerned to speed up the construction to ensure timely completion of projects.
“The construction work of the flyovers—Vyttila and Kundannoor—is progressing fast. Both of them will be opened to the public by March 2020. We have given instructions to the officers concerned to complete the remaining works in a time-bound manner,” Vijayan said.
Meanwhile, the `74.45-crore Kundannoor flyover, which was launched in March 2018, will also be opened for traffic by 2020, Pinarayi said.
The deadline for this flyover was also initially set for
December 2019. Sixty-eight per cent work of the 750-m flyover has been completed till now, a statement f
rom the CM’s office said.
Once completed, the traffic bottlenecks at Vyttila and Kundannoor junctions,
considered the busiest in the state, will be considerably eased, the statement said, adding that both the flyovers are being constructed using the state’s funds though it comes under the purview of the
Central Government.
“Though these projects had to be built using the Centre’s funds, the Central Government did not finance the projects after the previous UDF Government signed an agreement with the Centre saying that the state will build the flyovers,” the statement said.