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Saturday, August 13, 2005

NRIs to Create Consortium for Expansion of Airport

A group of Non-Resident Indians settled in West Asia, Australia, the U.S. and the U.K, who have formed the West Coast NRI Forum, have decided to create a consortium to develop infrastructure connected to the expansion of the Mangalore airport.

The consortium, which will plough in money into the airport project, will seek faster completion and adequate transport facilities from Mangalore airport to various towns on the west coast up to Panaji and some interior areas such as Chikmagalur, Shimoga, Udupi and Kodagu.

A team from the forum, which visited Mangalore under the leadership of its president Mohammed Farooque and senior member of the NRI community in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, Vishwanth Kamath, surveyed the project development at Bajpe and found out that the fund flow needs to be expedited.

Since there is some more land to be acquired (150 acres approximately), the idea of creating a consortium had become inevitable.

Farooque told 'The Hindu' daily that a document on the need for a full-fledged airport at Mangalore and its early completion was handed over to the Prime Minister through Union Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel.

The document carries the signatures of over 5,000 NRIs settled in various parts of the world, mainly West Asia.

There are a large number of people from Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada districts employed in West Asia and they find it difficult to travel from Mumbai to Mangalore and from there to the various parts of the State as there are no direct flights from West Asia to Mangalore.

Farooque said Kerala has four airports and all of them have direct flights to the Gulf, but they all are eight to 10 hours by road from Mangalore.

He welcomed the initiative taken by the Government to expand the facilities, but there were still some of the sectors that need some funding specially the connectivity from city to the airport.

Farooque and Kamath will call a meeting of the forum and will send a proposal to the Union Civil Aviation Ministry about the consortium.

The team also met Union Minister of State for Programme Implementation and Statistics Oscar Fernandes, said Kamath

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