ISLAMABAD: The Senate Stan­ding Com­mittee on Commu­nications has been told that construction work on all highways and motorways has stopped because of a lack of funds.

The committee chaired by Senator Hidayatullah discussed various issues the National High­ways Authority (NHA) was dealing with, including the movement of overloaded trucks on highways which were damaging the roads. The committee was informed by Communications Secretary Shoaib Siddiqui that the national highways projects had come to a standstill because the finance ministry had not made any payments.

“The amount of funds released were negligible in the last quarter of the previous fiscal year and there have been no allocations in the first quarter of the current fiscal year,” Mr Siddiqui said.

“I was secretary planning before this posting and I told the finance division several times that delay in payments was not only unfair but it would also lead to a rise in the cost of projects. This will have political consequences because highways development and repairs are mostly concentrated in remote areas that are usually underdeveloped to begin with,” he added.

The chairman of the committee asked if any cheques issued by the NHA had been dishonoured as well.

He was told that payments worth Rs5 billion had bounced and pointed out that payments to one of the members of the committee, Senator Ahmed Khan, were also in limbo. Senator Khan is a contractor with the NHA.

When officials of the finance ministry were asked to provide an explanation, they said that payments worth Rs22bn had been stopped because the NHA had filed incomplete documents.

However, officials of the communications ministry said that since road projects could not be completed within one fiscal year, the approval of relevant ministries was critical.

The finance ministry officials told the committee that Rs12bn against the approved bills was being released to the NHA in the next few days.

“I know from various discussions with the transporters that usually the contractors at weigh bridges either impose nominal fines or allow the trucks to continue in exchange for bribes,” Senator Hidayatullah said.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2018