KATHMANDU, May 23: The Likhu-4 Hydropower Project has witnessed some serious damage in its structure at a time when the project is all set to start a production test, raising questions on the quality of work in the engineering of the hydropower projects being constructed by some private companies.
According to the project, it has almost completed the entire construction of the 52.4 MW hydroelectricity project. “A wall of the desanding basin fell off suddenly on Thursday night,” said an official of the project.
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The official blamed the poor quality work by the SSNR, an Indian contractor awarded the civil works of the project. The damaged portion is reported to take another one and a half months for maintenance.
Initially, Bhilwara Energy Limited of India had initiated Likhu-4 in 2008. It was supposed to be an export-based project targeted to supply the generated electricity to India. The Indian promoter was provided a license to generate 120 MW of electricity.
After the Indian developer abandoned the project by showing dissatisfaction on issues like wheeling charge and energy export fee, Green Ventures took over the project construction, which later on reduced the production capacity to 52.4 MW from 120 MW. The project had targeted to produce electricity by 2014.
With delayed construction, the Department of Electricity Development from time to time had sought clarifications from the project arguing that it was not on the track to meet the construction deadlines and failed to make timely reports of its work progress to the department. Showing the pretext, the government authority had even seized the bank deposit of the project.
