ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee has raised questions on changes being made in the route of Pak-China Economic Corridor, and urged the government to decide the matter on political, and not technical, grounds.

At a meeting on Friday, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate reprimanded National Highway Authority (NHA) Chairman Shahid Ashraf Tarar for working on the new route and said the decision should be made by politicians and not officials.

The NHA chief informed the committee that as a short-term measure the new route of the economic corridor — to be constructed from Khunjerab in Northern Areas to Gwadar in Balochistan — was being adopted to utilise the existing communication network and ensure that Gwadar Port became operational as soon as possible.

Also read: Corridor furore

Later, he said, the original route of the corridor would be followed by building a road from Khunjerab to Gwadar via Mianwali, Dera Ismail Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Khuzdar and Turbat.

PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar expressed concern over the development and asked the ruling PML-N to address the concerns.

Once the new route was adopted, he said, it would overtime create its own vested interests and become impossible for the government to revert to the initially planned route. “Thus for all practical purposes the new route will become final and irrevocable.”

“The decision about the economic corridor’s route is fundamentally political and has to be made at political level. It cannot be made by officials attending today’s meeting,” he said.

Talking to Dawn after the meeting, Mr Babar said the original route was aimed at connecting underdeveloped areas of Khyber Pakhtun-khwa and Balochistan to the corridor, but with adoption of the new alignment the areas would remain ignored.

“The basic issue in deciding the alignment is whether any importance has been given to national harmony and integrity by connecting the less developed areas of all provinces and tribal areas to the economic corridor. This is a political and not technical issue,” he said.

“The government’s earlier announcement about the original route of the corridor had raised expectations among people living in the areas along it,” he added. “Now they will be disappointed.”

The PPP senator raised three questions to help parliament take up the issue.

He asked what additional uplift projects would have to be undertaken and at what additional total cost if the initially planned route was followed, and called for making public a list of the road and infrastructure projects already available along the initially planned route.

The second question was about the inclusion of the additionally required infrastructure in the Public Sector Development Programme. Its answer, Mr Babar said, would provide a clear picture of the actual cost of the new works to be undertaken.

Finally, he asked how much time it would take to make the originally planned route operational.

He said the Gwadar port would become functional after the opening of Ratodero-Gwadar road which, the NHA chairman had said, would be completed by May this year.

The committee asked the government to submit its replies to the questions in a week.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2015

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