Mumbai,The Passenger Water Transport (PWT) project on the west coast of Mumbai is the most important mass transit and eco-friendly initiative aimed to decongest the city. The project envisages linking western water front from Nariman Point to Borivali with PWT terminals along the route - Bandra, Juhu, Versova and Marve. Using state-of-the art technology, these futuristic terminals will have facilities such as waiting lounges, book stalls, refreshment halls, restaurants, cafeteria at par with global standards.
Though it was initially with the Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB), the state government appointed the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) as a nodal agency to implement the project vide a GR dated 15.2.2002.
On Monday, the corporation received a bid for the implementation of Water transport service from M/s Prathibha Industries Ltd, a renowned firm in the field of infrastructure development.
The entire MSRDC team has worked hard on this project. Our goal is to execute a good Public-Private Partnership (PPP) based PWT project for the city of Mumbai, said Sonia Sethi, vice-chairman and managing director, MSRDC.
The MSRDC has been actively involved in preparing the Detailed Project Reports, obtaining environmental clearances for the project to carry forward the bidding process. Despite best efforts, the bidding could not succeed.
The second round of bidding began in July 2008. The corporation invited bid on Built-operate-Transfer (BoT) basis with Viability Gap Funding (VGF) as the bidding criteria. However, due to various reasons like - absence of State Support Agreement (SSA) and global economic recession, no bids were received.
MSRDC again invited bids for the third time on BOT basis with Concession Period as the bidding criteria, which is usually adopted in many of the PPP projects.
Over the past few months, the MSRDC team has spent lot of time and effort with all stakeholders and experts in the form of several pre-bid meetings. Certain clarifications and common set of deviations have been issued based on the discussions with field consultants to ensure that the PWT project becomes more user-friendly. Without deviating from scope of work document, the corporation successfully striked a balance between passenger interest and making the project financially viable.
Next few days, we will evaluate if Pratibha Industries bid falls in criteria. It is but natural for projects like PWT to receive few bids because the scale of project and the risk involved. Now, with the sincere efforts of MSRDC, the city of Mumbai can hope to have a world class water transport facility, explained Subhash Nage, chief engineer, MSRDC.
Added Nage, Mumbaikars will soon be cruising along the waters of the Arabian sea to reach their destinations in less time and more comfort, which otherwise would have not been possible with the existing road/rail infrastructure.
