AIZAWL, April 6 (PTI): Ninety-eight per cent of work on a cross-border road under the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMTTP) to link south Mizoram’s Lawngtlai town and Myanmar’s Sittwe port has been completed, officials said.
Public works department officials, led by its engineer-in-chief C Lalchhuana, informed Governor Dr. Haribabu Kambhampati on Wednesday that 98.01 per cent of the road component of the Kaladan project on the Mizoram side (NH-501A) has been completed so far.
Lalchhuana said that the 87.18 km stretch of road between Lawngtlai and Zochachhuah under the bilateral project is expected to be completed by June.
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“Two more bridges are yet to be completed along this stretch of road. The construction may take two months and we are hopeful that it will be completed by June if there is no further obstruction from landowners,” Lalchhuana told PTI.
There are eight bridges and more than 420 culverts on the 87.18 km stretch of the cross-border road under the KMTTP, he said.
KMTT Project was launched in 2008 under the erstwhile UPA government as part of the Look East (Now Act East) policy.
The project, when completed, would first link the Indian seaport of Kolkata to Sittwe seaport in Myanmar across the Bay of Bengal.
From Sittwe, the route will continue over river Kaladan to the western Myanmarese town of Paletwa.
Paletwa will then be connected to the India-Myanmar border by a 110-km-long road.
The international border (Zochachhuah or Zorinpui) will then be connected by road with Lawngtlai town in Mizoram.
The construction of the road component on the Mizoram side began in 2010.
Though the road project was initially scheduled to be completed by 2014, it has been delayed due to strikes by landowners in areas from where the project passes through over the issue of compensation, Lalchhuana said.
Last month, Union Minister of State for External Affairs RK Ranjan Singh told reporters in Aizawl that the Kaladan project got delayed due to the political situation in Myanmar.
During the meeting with the Governor, PWD officials also informed him that six more projects are in the pipeline in the northeastern state.
A proposal for the six projects, including a permanent bridge over Tuivai River to link Mizoram’s northeast with neighbouring Manipur, has been sent to the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), they said.
