PESHAWAR, Nov 17: Substantial work is needed to be done along the recently-inaugurated Peshawar-Islamabad motorway to take care of a host of safety issues and facilities allegedly left unattended owing to pre-mature opening of the multi-billion rupees project, according to sources.

President General Pervez Musharraf inaugurated M-I on October 30, but there is a lot of work to be carried out to put it in useable shape and make its facilities operational, including computers installed at toll plazas on various intersections.

Official sources conceded that construction work was still in progress at some points risking the lives of workers and road users because of speeding vehicles.

The risk factor gets aggravated due to thick fog which undermines motorists’ vision at night and early in the morning these days. A couple of days ago, a bus was seen lying overturned at a point close to the Mardan intersection as its driver lost control after hitting a pile of construction material.

A major part of the three-lane M-I has yet to get reflectors installed on it to facilitate road users traveling after sunset.Similarly, it will take the authorities some time to install emergency calling system along the dual carriageway and establish fuel stations and restaurants.

A 154-kilometre section of the motorway has been completed at a cost of Rs30 billion.

The project was conceived in 1992 and construction work commenced in 1997.

The sources said the road was opened for traffic with no fence having been erected for pedestrians who could be seen moving dangerously on the motorway at places lacking fence.

M-I’s project-director Waseem Afzal claimed that fencing had been completed soon after the M-I was opened.

“Thieves have removed fence at some points leaving it open to be misused by pedestrians and slow-moving traffic,” says the project director.

This correspondent also saw people crossing over the highway from several places with no fence. At other places, mutilated corpses of stray dogs were lying there in the middle of the highway after being crushed by vehicles.

Unprotected boundaries are being used as ‘free-entry points’ by vehicle owners to enter the motorway, including horse-driven carts, motorcycles and tractor-trolleys.

Some officials, when contacted, attributed the entry of prohibited transporters partly to insufficient number of highway policemen deployed at the newly-opened section of the motorway.

The project-director told Dawn that the National Highway Authority (NHA) had asked the Motorway Police to increase patrolling on the Peshawar-Islamabad section to ensure safety of passengers and put an end to misuse of the highway.

This writer has seen, somewhere between the Peshawar and Mardan section, a van standing in the middle of the road.

At another place, a motorist was seen driving his car in the opposite direction of the road at night.

An official of the Motorway Police told Dawn that four mobile squads had been deployed between Peshawar and Islamabad to check traffic violations.