BAHAWALPUR: The Uch Sharif-Multan Express Highway has not been completed after a passage of 10 years.

The project instead of providing facilities to the people along the Express Highway has created inconvenience due to leftover work.

During the PPP rule, former prime minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani planned the mega project to provide travelling facilities to the people of Uch Sharif about 70 kilometres from here and the Jalalpur Peerwala and link them with Multan.

He proposed the construction of Express Highway from Uch Sharif via Jalalpur Peerwala up to Multan with an overhead bridge near Jhangra Sharqi on dried-up Sutlelj.

Gilani inaugurated the project and with the provision of millions of rupees by him, the work was taken in hand.

After Gilani’s exit, the project was ignored with the result that the base work which cost millions of rupees was ruined and people faced inconvenience.

Later, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi inaugurated the mega project but it remained incomplete as the tenure of the PML-N came to an end in 2018.

Officials of the NHA said the funds which were released for the project by the PML-N government were later withdrawn. They said the work could be resumed after the allocation of funds by the federal government.

They said the work on the project estimated to cost over Rs5 billion needed to be revised.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2019