THE deep-sea port of Gwadar is supposed to be connected to the Chinese border through two routes — eastern route and western route.

The eastern route will pass through Makran coastal highway, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan, Lahore, Islamabad, Mansehra, Thakot, Raikot to Khunjarab while the western route will pass through Gwadar, Turbat, Bismah, Surab, Qalat, Quetta, Zhob, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Kohat, Peshawar and Islamabad onward.

Gwadar is almost already connected to Karachi via the Makran costal highway. One should not construct the western route at a snail’s pace as a single carriageway.

The real CPEC eastern route would interconnect almost all mega cities of Punjab, and all allied industries and facilities will also be automatically constructed on the CPEC eastern route.

Thus, with the exception of a small portion of the eastern route — Havilian-Thakot highway section — most of the eastern route will pass through Sindh and Punjab, right from Karachi to Islamabad.

One should not necessarily raise an objection against the eastern route. However, the real issue is that the western route must also be built as a dual carriageway, eight-lane road, four each under the same standard parameters as the eastern route.

Aftab Alam

Swat

Published in Dawn November 28th, 2016