AAI to resume terminal work at airport on April 24

Ayyappan.V@timesgroup.com

Chennai:16.04.2020

The guidelines issued for the shutdown relaxing some of the restriction after April 20 have come as a blessing for the Chennai airport. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) will now be able to resume construction of integrated terminal which was stalled after a national shutdown was announced in the last week of March.

A senior official of AAI said, “We are looking at resuming work on April 24 but in a phased manner. The guidelines say that work can be carried out if labourers are available in a camp. Our workers are all in a labour camp opposite to the airport and have been sitting idle.”

He also said that social distancing norms will have to be followed while bringing workers in to the work site and also during construction. “We will start the work in a phased manner and step it up only slowly so that there is no need for the full force of labourers to come in for work. This will help in completing the work this year though there may be some delay because of the days lost and also because of the pace of work due to restrictions,” he added.

Sources said that there might be some issues in procuring materials because of the shutdown. But most of the materials like cement and all is stocked. The equipment and vehicles are at the work site only. Since, its infrastructure work contractors will be able to bring in materials and the government will allow trucks to come.

An official says that shutdown is also an advantage for the work because the airport is not functioning. “It was a challenge to carry out the work with a functioning domestic and international terminal on either side of the worksite. Now, the city side and the air side is free as there are no passengers and no flights,” he added.

All major work has been completed to build the terminal in the space between the international and domestic terminals. The structure is ready and the roof work was going on. Once that is over, the contractor was supposed to take up exterior and interior work on the building. The deadlines is September this year. The new terminal is expected to increase the passenger handling capacity of the airport to more than 30million passengers per year.

Similarly, work may also resume to complete the multilevel car parking that is underway near the metro rail station. There is also a move to see if works can resume to build balance portion of the taxiway. “It will be easier to carry out because only two to three flights, cargo flights and rescue flights, are operated in a day,” he added.

A filephoto of terminal work in progress at the airport