Pune: The Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MahaMetro) has completed excavation of one kilometer tunnel on the Range Hills to Swargate underground stretch on the Pimpri to Swargate route.
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) have allowed MahaMetro to continue its work on both the routes during the lockdown. MahaMetro has been sending special buses to Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand to bring back the labour who had reverse migrated to their hometown during the lockdown in April and May. Within Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad cities too, the MahaMetro is transporting its workforce on the site from the labour camps through buses.
Hemant Sonawane, General Manager of MahaMetro said, “More than 1500 workers have resumed duty with MahaMetro out of the total 2600 workforce. Every week, around 100 workers are returning to Pune city to join their duty.”
The underground stretch is of 5.02 kilometre length and has underground stations at Shivajinagar, Civil Court, Budhwar Peth, Mandai and Swargate. This stretch is a part of the 16.6 kilometres route from Pimpri to Swargate. The tunnel is 275mm thick, 1.4-metre-wide and 5.8 metre in diameter. The tunnels are 18 metre below ground level and separated by 15 metres distance for the entire length of the route.
The MahaMetro had started the underground route work from Agriculture college end. Two tunnel-boring machines have been put to work for excavating two tunnels on the Range Hills to Swargate route. One tunnel has been dug for more than 1 kilometre distance while the other is around 700 metres.
Since workforce is becoming easily available now, MahaMetro has also expedited work on the station work on priority stretch of Vanaz to Garware College on Karve road of the Vanaz-Ramwadi route and Pimpri to Dapodi on the Pimpri-swargate route.
MahaMetro is also taking special health precautions for its workers. Doctors have been appointed to conduct health checkups for workers at the 16 labour camps. About 22 workers who were infected with the coronavirus, have recovered and resumed duty.
