ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Communications on Monday lashed out at the National Highway Authority (NHA) for not meeting the completion time of many important road projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and some others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa amounting to billions of rupees.
A meeting of the committee held at the NHA headquarters observed that road projects in KP — Peshawar northern bypass (PNB), Peshawar southern bypass (PSB) and Mardan-Swabi-Topi road — and projects under the CPEC —Abbottabad tunnel and motorways in Hazara, Hassan Abdal, Havelian and Thakot — could not meet their completion deadlines and would not be able to complete even by 2018.
According to a document provided to the committee members by the NHA, package-I of the PNB was scheduled to be completed by May 2011, but it was completed in 2014 and still some work on it was in progress.
The project’s package-II could not be completed by by the deadline of March this year and its completion date has now been revised to September next year. Similarly, its package-III could not be completed at its stipulated time of October 2014 and now its completion date has been revised to December this year.
The CPEC-related 119.6km Havelian-Thakot motorway project costing Rs141 billion was to complete by September 2016, but now it is expected to complete by February 2020.
In the absence of the committee’s chairman Muzammil Qureshi, its member Engineer Hamidul Haq Khalil chaired the meeting and grilled the NHA for constant congestion on the Peshawar northern bypass and regretted that motorists had to wait for hours for road clearance.
NHA officials informed the committee that the PNB project had been delayed because of the issue of acquisition of land belonging to former legislator Noor Alam Khan.
MNA Sarzamin Khan regretted that the NHA had completely ignored roads in KP and tourism was also badly affected due to the dilapidated condition of Swat road.
MNA Usman Tarakai said the NHA’s failure to complete the Mardan-Swabi-Topi road had adversely affected transportation of natural resources, marble and minerals to other parts of the country.
The meeting was also attended by Minister of State for Communications Mohammad Junaid Anwar and Communications Secretary Sadiq Memon. NHA chairman Shahid Ashraf Tarar did not attend the meeting.
Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2017