HARIPUR: The worsening condition of the Railway Road in Haripur city has made travel difficult for the motorists.

The road is potholed up to Chechian causeway as it has neither been re-carpeted nor repaired properly.

Interestingly, the NHA has failed to overhaul the road, which constitutes the starting point from Haripur side of the 36.53km Khanpur Road from Julian to main Chowk in Haripur city, which the authority took over the charge of from the C&W department about two years ago.

The NHA has started widening the Khanpur Road by building bridges and shoulders from Khanpur side and re-carpeted the road from Chechian causeway towards Khanpur in parts, but almost two kilometres stretch between Chechian causeway and the main chowk remains to be paved. The patchwork and ditch filling is carried out intermittently for obvious reasons of pacifying the people but the patchwork gets washed away with a single rain.

“It is done only when some dignitaries are about to travel via Railway Road,” said Sheikh Fayaz, a political activist, adding the patchwork with substandard material made mockery of the tall claims of elected representatives and the authorities concerned regarding high standard development projects.

According to Imran Khan, a former naib nazim, the Railway Road which connects to the Khanpur-Taxila Road near T&T Colony stop, is of immense importance as several villages, educational institutions and a couple of industrial units are situated on either side of it.

Hundreds of both public and private vehicles used this road to access daily the Hazara Motorway from Chechian interchange, but now avoid it due to its bad condition.

“We have Omar Ayub Khan as a serving federal minister and his first cousin, Akbar Ayub Khan as provincial minister for C&W, but condition of the main artery is deplorable,” said Sohail, a trader.

He said although the two lawmakers had got approved several important development projects for their constituents, the nerve-wrecking delay in reconstruction of Railway Road had put question mark on their performance.

He said Haripur district alone contributed billions of rupees to the provincial exchequer annually in taxes but the longstanding issue of re-carpeting of Railway Road showed that the government was not concerned about the welfare of its citizens.

The officials in the NHA’s Abbottabad office were not available for comments. However, an informed source at the office of federal minister Omar Ayub Khan said the widening and reconstruction of Khanpur Road up to main Haripur Chowk was approved by the federal government during his brief stint as MNA in 2014. He said the work on the road was in progress and would be complete within next few months.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2019