By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Further delay and a fresh deadline once again from the Government. This has been the story thus far of the highly-anticipated Myntdu Leshka Hydro Electric project. The commissioning of the first unit of the power project, which was slated for October 15, has been further delayed but there is no new deadline for the first unit this time.
Instead, the State Government has targeted to commission all three units of the project by March 2012.
Talking to The Shillong Times Chief Secretary WMS Pariat said, “The target for us to commission all the three units is March next year.”
It may be mentioned that the commissioning of the first unit of the project has been delayed on several occasions in the past leading to unprecedented cost escalation.
The total cost of the project which was initially estimated at Rs 360 crore has now been revised to Rs 965 crore, almost a three-fold jump.
Reacting to a query about the delay in commissioning the first unit, the Chief Secretary explained that some tests were going on and the first unit would be commissioned very shortly.
“We are still committed to the target and efforts are on to commission the project at the earliest,” Pariat added. The DPR of the project was prepared way back in 2002 and the project took off in 2004 but all deadlines set by the State Government for commissioning the power project has been missed so far.
It is expected that once the first unit is commissioned it provide 42 megawatts of power to the power-hit State. The total output from the project has been estimated at 126 MW.
