Kathmandu, June 16

The government is all set to award the contracts for construction of the remaining works of the much-awaited Melamchi Water Supply Project.

As per officials of the Melamchi project, the process to award the contracts is almost complete and it may be awarded by this week. “In the first phase, we have plans to award the contract for the remaining works of the main tunnel,” said Rajendra Prasad Panta, spokesperson for Melamchi Water Supply Development Board (MWSDB), adding that the contract for the other remaining head works will be awarded by June.

The construction work of the project, which has been halted since almost seven months, is expected to gain momentum once the MWSDB awards the contracts for the remaining works. The MWSDB had called for a tender for construction of the remaining works of the project on April 10.

The fate of the water project was unclear since December last year after the Italian company, Cooperativa Muratori e Cementisti (CMC) di Ravenna, which was building the project, abandoned the project owing to its worrisome financial state.

Earlier, a Cabinet meeting had decided to call a new tender for completion of remaining works of project under two packages.

Meanwhile, Panta claims that once the contracts for the two packages have been awarded the Melamchi Water Supply Project will be completed by the next one year.

On April 30, the MWSDB had presented two options to the Ministry of Water Supply to move ahead with the project — calling separate tenders for remaining headworks and tunnel works or calling a ‘multi-package’ tender allowing one capable contractor to complete all the remaining works of the project.

The MWSDB had suggested the ministry to call for separate tenders for the remaining works.

According to Panta, a majority of construction works, excluding tunnel works and headworks, has been completed at the project site. “We have estimated that construction of the remaining works will require a budget of almost Rs three billion.”

After the previous contractor abandoned the Melamchi project, the government had formally cancelled the contract with CMC on February 5 after the Italian company failed to resume works.