RAWALPINDI: The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) on Tuesday booked six senior officials of the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) on the charge of causing loss to the public exchequer by substandard construction of Adiala Road.

However, none of the accused identified in the FIR registered with the ACE has been arrested so far.

The accused nominated in the FIR are: Mohammad Akram Soban, director engineering; Omer Farooq, deputy director; S.M. Husnain, deputy director; Mohammad Akram Nadeem, assistant director; Mohammad Ghafran, sub-engineer; Mohammad Tariq, sub-engineer, and Zia Rauf, resident engineering consultant.

The role of three other officials - Mohammad Ramzan, Asghar Hussain Bukhari and Mohammad Asghar Waraich - will be fixed after the investigation by the ACE is completed.

The 4.8 kilometre portion of Adiala Road was constructed at a cost of Rs284.6m in 2016

The construction of the 4.8 kilometre portion of the road, from the Government Servant Housing Foundation to the Jail Adiala, was started by the RDA during 2015-16 at a cost of Rs284.644 million.

After allegations of substandard construction of the road surfaced, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif directed the DCO to look into the matter. The DCO constituted a committee on August 20, 2016, to inspect the work.

The committee visited the road on September 10 in the presence of the director engineer RDA and his staff and representatives of the consultants. The committee found the road damaged with the top slab of the drains at crossing points of streets unable to bear the load. Their thickness was less than the required minimum of eight inches.

The director engineering was requested to get deep tests conducted from the UET Taxila to ascertain the compaction and thickness of different component layers of pavements and execution tests of the bitumen etc.

On the direction of the commissioner, the director general RDA along with the director admin and finance and other officials concerned visited the site on December 17. They also observed that the height of manholes for services was 6.7 inches above the road surface creating hurdles in the flow of traffic.

No lane marking and cat-eye work was done. The overall condition of the road was not satisfactory.

The engineering consultant did not supervise the work satisfactorily and failed to rectify the issues on time though payments were recommended without supervising the site.

The ACE registered a case against the officials concerned on the complaint of the additional commissioner coordination and launched an investigation.

Published in Dawn February 8th, 2017