RailEnquiry

HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has decided to provide a common duct for cables and other utility services on the metro rail corridors on a priority basis.A committee, headed by GHMC commissioner MT Krishna Babu, held a meeting with service providers regarding common ducton Saturday and decided in favour of having common ducts in the middle of the roads. The panel decided to charge the service providers for constructing ducts at the calculated rate per km which would be decided after considering the expenditure incurred to lay the duct. The rate would be calculated for the entire length of that corridor and agencies have to pay for it irrespective of whether they utilize the duct partly or completely.It has also been decided to give incentive to service providers. The operators who come first would be charged at the calculated rate based on the expenditure, while the agencies that apply later would be charged at the discretion of the corporation. Operation & maintenance (O&M) of the ducts would be given to private contractors based on tender basis every year. The committee has entrusted INCAP (Infrastructure Corporation of Andhra Pradesh) with the work of feasibility study and preparation of detailed project report (DPR). It would also act as transaction adviser and study the potential for laying the number of cables in each and every major road of the city. INCAP would also suggest the mode of execution of project i.e., private public partnership mode on build operate and transfer or by GHMC itself.

The committee has decided to send a team of officials from GHMC along with the representatives of FACO ( Federation of Arial Cable Operators) to visit Chennai and Kolkata to finalise the method of construction of the proposed duct.

Selected representatives from the service providers, who are technically conversant with the system of cables and their details, along with officials of GHMC

would finalise the cross-section of the proposed duct with regard to the size, shape, number of cables and diameter of cables, the officials said. GHMC additional commissioner (planning) D Ronald Rose, engineer-in-chief R Dhan Singh and representatives of 26 service providers attended the meeting.