NEW DELHI: The Covid-19 situation has affected the Delhi Metro’s phase-4 work, but the ongoing project will get delayed only by a couple of months and therefore, won’t entail much cost escalation, said Delhi Metro Rail Corporation chief, Mangu Singh.
The Union Cabinet, in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in March last year had approved three out of the six corridors of the Delhi Metro’s proposed phase 4 which will further improve connectivity in Delhi.
“We had started our work in December last year with a groundbreaking ceremony, and were making progress but then the pandemic hit and affected everything,” Singh said.
The DMRC chief, however, asserted that the ongoing project will be pushed further only by a few months.
“Both Covid-19 and the lockdown it induced has impacted the project of Phase-4, but it won’t get delayed by more than two to three months. And, therefore it won’t entail much cost escalation,” he said.
Singh said these are challenging times but the DMRC team utilised the lockdown time to work on detailing and designing of the project, so that “we would be ready whenever the situation improved”.
During the 169-day period when metro services were suspended starting March 22, the DMRC had suffered losses worth nearly `1,300 cr, sources had earlier said.
Singh said, after Covid-19 hit Delhi, labourers were camped up and later started to move back to their native places.
“However, now almost 80-90 per cent of labourers are back due to ‘Unlock’, and work is going on again keeping all safety precautions,” Singh said.
Under approved segment of Phase-4, 61.679-km of new metro lines shall be constructed across three different corridors comprising 45 metro stations. These new sections shall provide interconnectivity among the already operational lines of the Delhi Metro.