SoBo residents may get free stay at hotels courtesy MMRC

Mumbai: Residents from South Mumbai and those residing in old dilapidated structures parallel to the alignment of the city’s first underground Metro-3 corridor between Colaba-Bandra-Seepz might get free stay at hotels temporarily. This is because Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation  (MMRC) has decided to give alternate accommodation in hotels to residents whose buildings are weak and to avoid any loss of life or injuries in case any untoward incident occurs when civil works are carried out for the underground corridor. The MMRC would also be paying for the residents’ stay at hotels. However, these might not be luxury five-star hotels but standard hotels so that residents do not complain.

The MMRC is carrying out a pre-construction building condition survey where it will request residents of dilapidated buildings to shift to hotels wherever the authorities fear that vibrations due to civil work for underground corridor may cause vibrations in these old structures. “We are currently carrying out the survey on the whole alignment but mainly we feel that old structures are located in Girgaum and Kalbadevi. This exercise is being done to ensure that because of the vibrations if any untoward incident takes place, it would not result in loss of life,” said a senior MMRC official.

“The temporary stay, however, would be only for few days and due to which we are shifting residents to transits camps. Once the survey identifies the structures, we would convey it to residents if those structures are weak. Initially there might be reluctance but we would have to do the shifting considering that tunnelling work might result in vibrations and we do not want to take any chances,” added the MMRC official.

The MMRC will use tunnelling boring machines (TBMs) for conducting tunnelling work and its contractors have also placed orders worth approximately Rs 2,000 crore for purchasing 17 TBMs. TBM is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata and weighs around 1,400 tonnes. They are also be used for micro tunnelling. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand.

Incidentally, Girgaum and Kalbadevi are the locations where MMRC faced protests from locals due to their rehabilitation for the Metro project. According to data from Mhada, there were 14,858 dilapidated buildings in the city and most of them were constructed before 1970.

The Metro-3 project has been divided into seven civil packages where each contractor is given a separate package in which to carry out civil works. The Metro 3 will have 26 underground stations and will be a crucial north-south link where it will connect major central business districts (CBD) such as Nariman Point, Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) and Seepz in Andheri. The cost of the corridor is estimated to be around Rs 23,136 crore and is to be commissioned in 2021.