On the eve of the much-talked-about visit to Calcutta by a team from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee?s government is scrambling to complete as much work as possible under the Calcutta Transport Infrastructure Development Project funded by it.

JBIC representative Fusato Tanaka and project officer Vineet Sareen will fly into the city from Delhi on Tuesday evening to review the progress of the Rs 400-crore project.

The range of infrastructure facilities includes construction of three flyovers and road improvement at seven important junctions in the city.

Transport secretary Sumantra Choudhury and joint secretary H. Mohan, also director, public vehicles directorate, toured all the project sites where work was underway, on Monday morning.

?The team will devote the best part of Wednesday to review the projects on-site,? said Choudhury.

Despite getting the project deadline extended to December 2005, Bhattacharjee?s government stands to lose face when the JBIC team visits some of the unfinished project sites on Wednesday.

One of them is the half-done Park Street flyover, the government?s biggest headache. Scheduled for completion by March 2004, the proposed 982-m-long structure will take at least another four months, thanks allegedly to feet-dragging by Senbo, its contractor.

?Girders and piers, which will make up the flyover?s under-structure, are being manufactured at the moment. Once they are delivered, work will speed up. We are expecting to complete work by January next year,? a transport department official said.

Another area of worry is the main manhole just below the Gariahat flyover, which represents Package II. Work, scheduled to be ready by March, is yet to start.