The Telangana Government has decided to convene a meeting with the contractors of Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project soon as part of its efforts to resume the tunnel-one work stopped last year.
An all-party meeting chaired by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in the Assembly committee hall on Thursday mulled various options to restart the work before deciding upon talking to the existing contractors. The option of changing the contractor was also discussed at length at the meeting that lasted over two hours.
Minister for Irrigation T. Harish Rao, MPs G. Sukhender Reddy (Nalgonda) and B. Narsaiah Goud (Bhongir), Leader of the Opposition K. Jana Reddy, MLAs K. Venkat Reddy (Congress), R. Ravindra Kumar (CPI), S. Rajaiah (CPI-M), N.V.S.S. Prabhakar (BJP), Principal Secretary (Irrigation) S.K. Joshi, Engineer-in-Chief C. Muralidhar and others participated.
Sources said the Chief Minister had reiterated that the government was interested in completing the project and that it would ensure that the project faced no fund crunch, provided the contractors resumed the work. He is understood to have told the Irrigation Department authorities to talk to the contractors J.P. Associates and Robbins Inc, the US firm that was given the work of tunnel excavation by JP, to find whether they were interested in resuming the work or not with an offer that the government would clear bills for work completed every month.
However, there was no unanimity at the meeting on the contractors’ demand seeking a payment of Rs. 723 crore as price adjustment due to cost escalation. Doubts were raised over the contractors’ financial position as the JP Group was planning to sell off some of its subsidiaries due to huge debt burden being faced by it.
The Chief Minister was also said to have been against terminating the contractor immediately as it would lead to arbitration, jeopardising the project for long. Instead, the government would ask the contractor to resume work and get timely payment for the work done.
