ISLAMABAD: The chairman of the National Highway Authority (NHA) assured a Senate committee on Tuesday that he would hold an inquiry against the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) for charging nearly three times the toll tax for anyone travelling to and from the Islamabad International Airport (IIA).

NHA Chairman Jawad Rafique Malik told a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Communications that the FWO had offered to relay the surface of the motorway at subsidised rates and according to the agreement with the NHA was collecting a toll tax of just over Rs1 per kilometre.

“There is a patch of almost 8km of the motorway that is used to go to and return from IIA. We have taken up the issue, and the FWO may abolish the Rs11 toll tax within 15 days,” Mr Malik said in response to a question from Muttahida Qaumi Movement Senator Mian Ateeq Shaikh.

Senate committee takes up point of public importance on toll tax to and from IIA

On May 15, Senator Shaikh and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Senator Samina Saeed had raised a point of public importance regarding the collection of toll tax at IIA. Every vehicle travelling to and from the new airport has been charged a toll tax since the airport was inaugurated.

Mr Malik said the FWO’s subsidiary company MORE was charging tax per kilometre and hoped that the toll would soon be abolished soon now that the matter has been taken up by the NHA.

Senator Shaikh, who received a special invitation to the meeting because is question was to be discussed, said the NHA chairman was trying to divert the issue rather than explaining why the FWO was charging a toll tax and who had authorised them to do so.

“First of all, the FWO is charging each vehicle Rs30 instead of Rs11, and the second thing is that they do not give receipts or tickets to 75pc of people. I have a receipt that clearly mentions that the toll tax is Rs30. How can we allow the army to depute personnel and start charging toll tax; the NHA chairman is not answering my question. I simply asked how the FWO can collect toll tax from people. The fact is that every general want to go in the FWO and the NHA is obliging it,” he said.

Balochistan National Party Senator Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldini said that although there are thousands of contractors in Pakistan the major contracts are awarded to the FWO.

“Do we assume that the contracts are awarded to the FWO was a sitting Lt Gen is placed there,” he asked.

Mr Malik, after consulting with Communications Secretary Furqan Bahadur, said a detailed inquiry would be carried out. He also assured senators that the contract between the NHA and FWO would be presented to the standing committee so they could see how much FWO had to charge.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2018