ISLAMABAD, May 4: Poor engineering in the construction of a road at Sector I-11/2 has caused a loss of about Rs1 billion to the civic agency of Islamabad, it has been learnt.

The I-11/2 land is under the possession of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and its engineering wing is constructing the one-kilometre-long road in the sector, said a senior official of the civic agency.

The sector has a large number of residential plots developed for the CDA employees. The official said the engineering wing during the road work had eaten up over 150 residential plots.

“The road was constructed on an area which originally had 150 residential plots of different sizes and the error is in the notice of the CDA management,” added the official.

“How can you eat up our plots because of the poor road engineering,” said labour union leader Mazhar Hussain.

He said they would lodge a protest with the management of the authority through their union representatives if a proper probe was not initiated into the issue.

“We will take the matter to the court of law if action was not taken against the culprits,” he added.

However, Sanaullah Aman, the member engineering of the authority, passed the buck to the CDA planning department.

“My wing’s job is to build roads and I have established a few roads as per the maps given to me by the planning wing. If plots have been eaten up by the road you are talking about, you should ask the planning wing officials,” asserted Mr Aman.

He maintained that the road work had been going on since 2012. “Now we are almost close to completing the project. Even the work on laying of pipelines and drainage system is complete in the sector,” said Mr Aman.

A source in the CDA informed Dawn that the road was changed and not built in accordance with the original map.

“If you check the planning wing’s map, the road has been altered leading to the eating up of residential plots by the engineering wing,” said the source.

He added that the poor quality of engineering work was also evident from Google earth map which showed that the road was not built as per its original alignment.

There was no planning wing official available to clarify their position relating to the major engineering flaw.

However, CDA chairman Syed Tahir Shahbaz told Dawn: “We will hold an inquiry into the flaw.”

He said if the flaw was on the engineering side, “we will fix responsibility and rectify the matter on merit.” He said action would be taken against the officials responsible.

Mr Shahbaz said he would personally visit the construction site and get an update from the departments concerned.