Fear of Corona virus effects Kolkata’s East West Metro Railway

Kolkata, 27 February (HS): The deadly effects of Novel Corona Virus has not only gripped China and 30 other countries across the globe claiming nearly 3,000 lives so far, it has also indirectly harmed the smooth operations of Kolkata’s East West Metro Railway project and could even unnecessarily delay the extension of the new services.

Since most of the new rakes for the East West Metro Railway service – the city’s latest pride – have come from China, they cannot be used for trial run in the proposed underground service because of the absence of engineers and technicians from their Chinese manufacturer in view of the current locked down situation in that country following  the outbreak of deadly Corona Virus.

“We are facing tremendous inconveniences to conduct the necessary trial run and look into the safety and other aspects of  the rakes because of the absence of Chinese engineers and technicians,” said Kolkata Metro Railway General Manager Manoj Joshi here last night.

Commenting after conducting a visit at the construction site of the 16 km long Underground railway service,whose first phase between Salt Lake Stadium and Salt Lake Sector Five station,covering a distance of 5.3 km, was launched by Railway minister Piyush Goyal on 13 February, Joshi said none of the Chinese engineer and technician could arrive here because of the lockeddown condition in their country as a preventive measure of Corona Virus.

As a result the entire schedule of work had already been delayed by about a month now, the GM said and added that since only the Chinese engineers knew the technologies of these rakes and all instructions were written In Chinese language,our engineers found it extremely difficult to understand them.

Since public safety was very much related to this, we have decided to wait for some more time before taking the final decision, GM Joshi said.

Asked about the future of opening the East West Metro Railway’s first underground station at Phool Bagan in May as decided earlier, the GM said in all likelihood it would be delayed for some more time as  there was no other option but to wait for the Chinese experts after the danger of Corona Virus was over.