LAHORE: Engineers belonging to a joint venture -- China Railways (CR) and China North Industries Corporation (Norinco International) -- have almost completed various technical surveys before commencement of the civil work on the 27.1-km long Orange Line Metro Train Project from Ali Town (Raiwind Road) to Dera Gujran (Ring Road).

Sources supervising the preparatory arrangements before launch of the project’s civil work say CR-Norinco, which established site offices at various locations of the project route about 15 days ago, has completed surveys on soil testing, topography, route alignment, expected land acquisition, designing of the train stations, material and infrastructure-related information. These surveys will help CR-Norinco in making detailed design of the project.

“Since the CR-Norinco experts have almost completed surveys in coordination with the local departments concerned, we hope that we will be able to start civil work on the Rs165 billion Orange Line project by end of August or first week of September,” says Lahore Development Authority’s vice-chairman Khwaja Ahmad Hasaan.

He told Dawn on Tuesday that a group of senior experts representing the Chinese joint venture would also visit Lahore during next month’s first week in order to finalise the preparatory work.

Talking about the project’s land acquisition issues, he said a meeting was held on various issues of the project on Tuesday and it decided to drop the idea of acquiring a piece of land owned by the Punjab University Employees Cooperative Housing Society on Raiwind Road.

“Actually another piece of land has been identified at a better location in the area. Therefore, the participants finally decided to acquire this rather than the PU society land situated in Ali Town, the originating point of the project route,” he added.

As for the current status of a US$ 1.5 billion soft loan from the Exim Bank of China for the project, he said the Punjab government was likely to sign the agreement with the bank within next 15 days or so. And soon after signing, the bank would start transferring the loan amounts in phases.

“At the moment we have almost completed necessary documentation following various observations or queries raised by the Chinese officials related to the land acquisition and infrastructure etc. And we hope that the agreement will be signed with the bank soon,” Hasaan said.

He said there was no requirement of so much land as the project just needed the land at the places where train stations would be constructed. The entire train track, except 1.7km portion underground, would be elevated and constructed in the middle of the roads. “The experts have even started redesigning the train stations, deciding to keep these spots elevated too to avoid land acquisition. “Therefore, now we need acquisition of land for construction of stairs for the passengers to reach the stations,” he said.

A director of the LDA’s engineering wing told this reporter that the entire infrastructure-related works would be completed by the LDA. “Other works related to laying of track for train, availability of trains and provision of allied facilities such as signals, control room, staff training etc would be accomplished by CR-Norinco,” the official said.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2015

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