By Our Reporter With the Melamchi Water Supply Development Board (MWSDB) preparing to terminate the contract with the Italian contractor company CMC, the much-awaited Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) is likely to face the time and cost overrun. The board is planning to cancel the contract after issuing the 'Notice to Contract Termination' against the CMC. As per the existing law, the contractor has 14-day to contact board and if it wanted to continue the project construction, it might have the responsibilities back. However, the contractor is out of communication since December 15, 2018. The CMC officials had left the country in December to celebrate Christmas. Though the Italian Embassy in India – which also has the jurisdiction of Nepal, and Consulate General of Italy in Kathmandu had given their assurance of the officials' return, there has been no information about them since then. Since there are few chances of CMC's return to the project, the government has to initiate a new procurement process. The project has to start a normal procurement process and might need to follow the Procurement Guidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the main financer of the national pride infrastructure project. The MWSP started in 2002 was supposed to be completed in 2007, but it has achieved about only 92 per cent physical progress in 17 years. The deadline of this project has been extended multiple times in the past couple of years.