VIJAYAWADA: Once upon a time, business was conducted mainly through the waterway transport. Many articles were exported and imported via the waterways. Like the famous Buckingham Canal used by the British government to transport goods to South India. Waterways are the cheapest form of transport and now the government is concentrating on the development of the waterways. There are five national waterways in India. The Inland Waterways Authority of India has identified 106 waterways adding to the 5NWs.The national waterways are developed by the Central government through the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) the regulatory body for the Inland Waterways Transport (IWT) sector.
India has 50.1 per cent of road transport, 36 per cent of railway transport, 6.0 per cent of marine transport 7.5 per cent of pipelines transport systems. Waterway transportation is only 0.4 per cent. But now the Central government has started to develop the waterways in India. NW-4 is a 1,095 kilometres i.e. 680 miles long waterway in India. It connects Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and the Union territory, Puducherry. The NW-4 runs along the Coromandel coast through Kakinada, Eluru, Kommamur, Buckingham Canals and Coramandal and through parts of Krishna and Godavari rivers.
The AP government is focussing on the development of National Waterway-4 from Kakinada to Puducherry across a length of 1,095 km as the NW-4 is the most occupied place is AP. NW-4 will be developed in three stages. The first phase waterway will be from Kakinada to Muktyala on the Krishna River via Vijayawada. The second phase will be from Vijayawada to Pedaga-njam. Both the stages will be completed at a cost of-of '7,015 crore. The cost will be shared 51 per cent by IWAI of the Central government and 49 per cent by the state government. For this, they are planning to start a special purpose vehicle (SPV).
For this entire waterway in AP, 3,061 acres of government procured land and 1,739.10 acres of land has to be acquired. The state government is giving land as part of their contribution in the second stage. They have to build 456 bridges on Kakinada and Eluru Canals. Now the first phase of work has started from Muktyal to Amaravati.
Land acquisition pending:
The IWAI has given the contract to two companies for the work on River Krishna. It has also allotted Rs 98 crore for the work of the coastal consolidated structure. A private limited company will complete the channel from Harischandrapuram to Chamarru (Acchampet) of Guntur district with Rs 22.89 crore for the digging of 11.96 lakhs cubic metres of sand. From Chamarru to Muktyal of Krishna district, the channel work will be done by the International Marine Services of Mumbai with Rs 19.50 crore for the digging of 14.47 lakhs cubic metres of sand. For the other works, the tender process is on track.
In the second stage, land acquiring process will start by IWAI for expansion of the canals. This is required to start the navigation canal. Later the waterway work will start on Buckingham and Kommamur canals in Guntur, Meanwhile, Pra-kasam and Nellore districts farmers are objecting to the dredging work. The farmers are afraid that they will have irrigation problems next summer due to dredging in the rivers.
“We sent a proposal to the state government for the acquiring of about 18.5 acres of land at Muktyal, 14.92 acres at Ibrahimpatnam and 3.63 acres at Harischandrapuram for the first phase of NW-4. We are ready to pay the amount for that too. If the acquiring process is completed, the work of the first phase will be completed within 2018,” said Sridhar, deputy director, Inland Waterways Authority of India. “For phase 2, SPV has to be finalised by the government of India,” he added. He has assured the farmers that there will be no loss of water for the irrigation of River Krishna delta.
