GUJRAT: A study into the Shahbazpur Bridge over the River Chenab, linking Gujrat with Sialkot International Airport as well as Sialkot-Lahore motorway, has suggested the construction of the bridge one kilometer downstream of the Shahbazpur weir.

A meeting of irrigation experts, parliamentarians and district officials discussed the study at the DCO’s office this week.

The study also recommended strengthening the river banks through aligning eight kilometers upstream and as many kilometers downstream from the site of the bridge to make the project more viable. The alignment would help the rural areas surrounding the river to be safe from erosion and floods.

The Shahbazpur bridge was launched by then Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi in 2007 and then president Gen Pervez Musharraf had also laid the foundation stone of the project at the Nutt House, the native village of the Chaudhrys, in 2007.

The PML-N’s government first shelved the project and now after the lapse of some eight years it has taken it up but with changing the site and design.

The project is of a great economic importance for the people of Gujrat, Sialkot, Jhelum, Mandi Bahauddin and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The government had ordered the experts to complete the study in three months but it took 15 months to be presented for discussion.

The project cost which was estimated at Rs2 billion in 2007 will now exceed up to Rs4 billion due to the proposed alignment of 16 kilometers of riverside.

The construction of a bypass road from Jalalpur Jattan has been proposed in the project for the smooth flow of the traffic from Gujrat, Jhelum, Kharian, Bhimbher and Mirpur districts up to the Sialkot International Airport as an overwhelming number of the expatriate Pakistanis belongs to these districts.Gujrat District Coordination Officer Liaqat Ali Chatha told Dawn the alignment of both sides of the river would be done right from the Marala Head Works to Gujrat GT Road as the provincial roads department had been directed by the government to initiate work on the construction of the Shahbazpur Bridge.

He said that the construction work would begin before the completion of the current fiscal year as the model study had been done by the irrigation department near Nandipur over the Upper Chenab canal.

Widening and carpeting of the historical Kharian-Jalalpur Jattan road’s 38 kilometers portion has already been underway which would later on be linked to the Shahbazpur Bridge to connect it with Sialkot-Lahore motorway.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2016