Maldives govt denies stalled flagship city project
The minister said that at present, land acquisition in the area is not going on, and the claims that the project has been stalled is not correct.
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By
Aishath Fareeha Abdulla
Minister for Construction and Infrastructure Dr Abdulla Muthalib said on Wednesday that the land reclamation work for Ras Male has not been halted.
The Housing Development Corporation (HDC), which oversees the project, has also previously denied the allegations that the dredging work had stopped. The company said the construction of the bond wall was underway.
Sri Lanka's Capital Marine and Civil Construction (CMC) started dredging the Fushidhiggaru lagoon on December 18, for the development of the eco-city called Ras Male.
President Mohamed Muizzu said that 1,153 hectares of land will be reclaimed from the Fushidhiggaru lagoon near Gulhi, which takes about 17 minutes from Male by boat.
The Ministry of Construction and Infrastructure held a press conference on Wednesday and responding to a question from a journalist on the Ras Male project, the minister affirmed that at present, land reclamation in the area was not on going , but the claims that the project has been stalled were untrue.
“The construction of the bond wall is underway,” the minister said.
The minister mentioned two main things in the work:
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Made agreements with CMC and Boskalis of the Netherlands; Boskalis is using one dredger to dredge the Gulhi lagoon and the company intends to use the dredger to reclaim Ras Male once the Gulhi lagoon has been dredged
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When the work started, the area was not studied well enough to extract sand from the area. Earlier, the work was to start and carry on with the sand mining, but since there was not enough sand in the area for mining, it was conveyed that we should expand the sand acquisition
"At that time, as part of our efforts to start the project as soon as possible, we signed up so that we could start the work.The contractor also wanted to go ahead with the work as cost-efficiently as possible, so I believe that's why they used the dredger at this end," Muthalib said.
The Ras Male project is being carried out without any cost from the state budget. The CMC, which is doing the work, will be given 70 hectares of land in the area in exchange for their work.
