Tehran, July 18: The completion of Tehran’s subway system is four years behind plans due to the government’s lack of financial support, says the head of Tehran’s Railway Company.
The Iranian Parliament passed a bill last year which allowed Tehran’s City Council to use part of the country’s foreign exchange reserves to complete and modernize the city’s subway system with which an estimated1.5 million people commute daily.
Mohsen Hashemi, however, said on Saturday that the City Council has not received any sums from the government, Mehr news agency reported.
So far, only three lines (1, 2, 5) of the planned seven lines in Tehran’s subway system have been completed while about 70 percent of Line 4 is finished, Hashemi said.
He added that Lines 3 and 4 would have become fully operational by now if the government had financed the plans.
The Iranian Parliament’s Research Center said last week that the government’s refusal to support the subway projects was ‘against the law’ and warned against the ‘negative consequences’ of such a move.
Hashemi further said, “We have made every effort … the head of the City Council and the Mayor held several meeting with government and parliament officials which unfortunately had no results.”
He expressed hope that the government would take the necessary measures to address the issue, saying there was ‘no legal obstacles’ for the allocation of foreign exchange reserves for the project.
—–Agencies