The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects being implemented in the cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack have been fast-tracked with Chief Secretary Aditya Parsad Padhi taking stock of the ground situation in a high level meeting held on Wednesday wherein Municipal Commissioner Kishan Kumar presented the updates and outlined the issues for discussion.

Reviewing the progress, Chief Secretary Padhi set timelines against each milestone of the projects and directed concerned departments to complete their part of the work within scheduled time. The project proponents were asked to take prohibitive sanitary and safety measures in the projects like solid waste management and bulk water supply.

The major projects that figured in the meeting included the bulk water supply project in Bhubaneswar and adjoining urban areas budgeted at Rs 187.71 crore and the solid waste management project for Bhubaneswar and Cuttack budgeted at Rs 252 crore. The bulk water supply project has been  taken up to supply water to IIT, Bhubaneswar, NISER, Bhubaneswar,  Sea food park, Info-city-II, Khordha Industrial area, Khordha Municipality and Jatani Municipality. The construction work has been targeted to be completed by December,2017. MEIl Bhubaneswar Bulk Water Project Private limited been selected as the PPP partner.

The project would be funded with equity of the PPP partner, OUIDF loan, viability gap funding by Government of India and Government of Odisha. The project is envisaged to meet the water demand of 44 MlD at present which is likely to be enhanced to 60 lMD in future.  The works like construction of intake well cum pump house, water treatment plan have already been started at the ground level.

Similarly, the preparatory works for solid waste management project along with signing of agreement with the PPP partner, preparation of DPR, singing of land licence agreement, availing the consent to establish the plant from the Pollution Control Board etc have already been completed. Collector Khurda has been asked to allot additional land required for the purpose.

The issues relating to tree cutting, interdepartmental coordination, shifting of electric poles, lying of pipe line along the campus of SOG and Chandaka forest area etc were discussed and resolved in the meeting. Chief Executive Officer OUIDF Sishir Kumar Ratho, Special Secretary Home lalit Das along with senior officials from concerned departments participated.