With a fortnight remaining for meeting the deadline set by the district in-charge Minister, the Town Hall renovation work is only inching towards completion.
If B. Ramanath Rai, Minister in-charge of Dakshina Kannada, set an October-end deadline, Mayor Jecinta Vijay Alfred has set November-end as deadline for completing the renovation. J.R. Lobo, MLA, Mangaluru City South, expects that the hall should be ready for re-opening for the Children’s Day function on November 14.
According to K.S. Linge Gowda, executive engineer in-charge of the Rs. 3.55-crore renovation project, about 70 per cent of the work has been completed now.
He is hopeful that the work would be completed by this month-end. About 100 workers were on the job in shifts daily doing different work, he said. Mr. Linge Gowda said that only the civil works of re-laying floors with granite were lagging behind.
This was due to delay in procuring uniform matching colour granite slabs in bulk. There was a huge requirement of granite slabs to cover 10,000 sq ft area, including the halls and rooms. The granite slabs were being procured from Gujarat directly, he said.
He said that the all-India strike by trucks, festival holidays, including Ganesh Chaturthi and Dasara, have further added to the delay in works.
Mr. Linge Gowda said that modern push-back type seats are ready. They would be fixed once all work in the hall was completed. But the total sitting capacity would come down by 108 seats.
Earlier, the hall had 1,008 seats, in all. After the renovation, it would have 900 seats. Provision would be made in the balcony to accommodate 150 extra chairs whenever needed. A junior engineer in-charge of the project said that after the renovation, there was no need for artistes and others to hire sound and lighting system.
Mike stands could be avoided in the programmes. Modern acoustic, lighting system were being put in place as per the guidance of a noted theatre group based in Bengaluru.
