MULTAN: The breached portion of Head Muhammadwala Bridge road on the Chenab opened for light traffic on Thursday after restoration, involving filling of 60 feet breach, however after four months delay.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Zahid Saleem Gondal inaugurated the civil work along National Highway Authority (NHA) General Manager Hafiz Ahmed Bakhsh.

Talking to the media, the DCO said Rs55m had been allocated to restore the road to its previous design, adding the NHA would restore the road completely till March 16. He said the delay in filling the breach was due to the speedy and continuous water flow in the river.

Thousands of people from the districts of Multan, Muzaffargarh, Layyah, Jhang, Mianwali, Bhakkar, Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan continued facing hardships due breach in the road for four months.

DCO Zahid Saleem Gondal on Sept 12 had refused to allow breaches on the road near the bridges when a flood wave of only 400,000 cusecs hit the district as the irrigation and NHA authorities had claimed both the Head Muhammadwala and Sher Shah bridges had capacity of 1,000,000 cusecs. However, Commissioner Captain Asadullah Khan, who was not authorised to take such a decision, had ordered to dynamite the roads to both the bridges, giving an excuse that a technical committee, constituted by the CM, of which he was member, had recommended to do so.

During his visit to Multan on Sept 20, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had promised early restoration of Head Muhammadwala Bridge besides removing the fault in its design but the authorities failed to even restore the road for light traffic. The alarming factor of the delay in restoration of the road was that the people were forced to put their lives at risk by crossing the Chenab on boats while no arrangements were made by the district government to tackle any untoward incident despite drowning of 17 people in the river on Sept 17 when a boat capsized in the breached portion of Sher Shah bridge road.

On Dec 28, MNA Jamshed Dasti staged a sit-in outside Commissioner Office Multan against delay in repair of Head Muhammadwala approach road, and the commissioner had assured the MNA that the road would open for light traffic within four days but that was not done.

The irrigation department took a stand that breaches near the Head Muhammadwala were made as the design of the bridge was faulty and the bridge had been built by diverting the river. Various other objections were also raised to the design of the Head Muhammadwala bridge when it was constructed during the tenure of Yusuf Raza Gilani’s premiership.

Pattan Development Organization Project Manager Rabia Ghani said the road was dynamited to save the people from a disaster but for the last four months it had caused huge risk to thousands of people who crossed the river from the breach.

“According to an estimate, approximately 5,000 people crossed the river daily by boats being run by untrained people. The boats were of bad quality and overloaded,” she said, adding that the NHA should pay attention to faulty design of the bridge due to which the road to the bridge had to be dynamited.

Ms Ghani said width of the riverbed in the area was about 10km but the bridge was constructed on only one kilometer and length of the bridge must be proportionate to the width of the river.

“We strongly suggest to the NHA to construct the bridge over the dynamited location of the road and rectify all the faults while repairing it. If this is not done now, in the people would experience the same hardship in every future flood,” she added.

Hafiz Ahmed Bakhsh, General Manager NHA Punjab South, said completion time of restoration was 60 days; however, the contractor had been asked to complete the task earlier. He said the recommendation to convert the bridge into hydraulic structure had been forwarded to the technical committee to avert breaches on the road. He said the restoration cost of the project was Rs55m; however, the cost would be increased in case of hydraulic structure.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2015

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