Mumbai's Sewage Disposal Project sees substantial rise in cost price | Details
India Today
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has finalised contractors for its ambitious Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) project. However, the project cost being finalised now is 22 percent higher than the estimates of 2020, which works out to be nearly 11 percent hike per annum.
Two years of the Covid-19 pandemic and the current rise in prices of cement and steel coupled with Russia-Ukraine war has resulted in the cost escalations of several sewage plants being set up by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) by several crores.
As per the BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal, the project cost being finalised now is 22 percent higher than the estimates of 2020, which works out to be nearly 11 percent hike per annum.
However, the BMC commissioner said that the annual increase of 11 percent per annum is highly justified and that BMC has been trying to set up the Sewerage Treatment Plants at 7 locations, namely, Worli (500 MLD), Bandra (360 (MLD), Malad (454 MLD), Ghatkopar (337 MLD), Dharavi (418 MLD), Bhandup (215 MLD) and Versova (180 MLD).
“For the 7th STP project of Malad, there were land reclamation issues in 2020 which have been resolved now and the quoted lowest bid now in 2022 for Malad also happens to be 0.5 percent below the estimated value.
Even though the present estimated costs (approved by Peer Review Committee of IIT, Mumbai and VJTI experts) were on the higher side, these current estimates have become irrelevant now in view of the lowest quotes received through competitive bidding, project wise,” said BMC.
BMC emphasises that this is for the first time ever that STPs of monstrous size 400 MLD-500 MLD are being constructed in India. Till now, most of the STPs in India which have been constructed are in the range of 50 MLD-100MLD.
“Considering the constraints of availability of land, multi-storey construction of STPs in some projects, challenges of constructing some of these projects on existing functional sites of sewerage treatment facilities, land reclamation issues in Malad and uncertainties thereof, the construction of these STPs will be a major milestone in our country,” said BMC
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