NHA to initiate major road projects: Gardezi

Chairman National Highway Authority, Syed Muhammad Ali Gardezi said on Sunday that NHA has decided to undertake several major highway projects through public-private partnership on Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis. In the first phase, NHA plans to build Hyderabad-Karachi Motorway (M-9) project under the BOT arrangement, which would also encourage other private parties to invest in such projects, NHA chief told APP.
He said that some other projects like Lyari Expressway Project (leftover work), additional carriageway of Karachi Northern Bypass (M-10) and overlay and modernisation of Islamabad-Lahore Motorway may also be completed with the co-operation of private sector assistance on BOT basis. He informed that NHA is soliciting proposals from well-reputed national and international private construction consortia to finance, design, develop, construct, operate, manage and transfer these projects.
About the ongoing projects, he said that when he took over a few months ago, then work on most of the projects had been suspended due to non-availability of funds and contractors' liabilities are over Rs14 billion. He said the biggest challenge that he faced was to restart work on the suspended projects. Under the guidance of the Prime Minister, the first phase work has been restarted on those projects on which 60 percent work has been finished.
To a question, Gardezi said that this year there will be no shortage of funds as Rs39 billion have been allocated for Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). He said that National Highway Council has allocated provinces shares in the PSDP so that there are no complaints from any unit of the federation.
About the Kallar Kahar road mishap he said that National Highway and Motorway Police (NH&MP) officials can partially be blamed for school bus tragedy, but other departments and factors' fault is the major cause of the mishap. He revealed that the bus was over 30 years old and unfit to come on any main road and it was driven by the owner of the bus, not a professional driver. For preventing such accidents in the future, there is a proposal to lower the carriageway where several accidents have taken place. He added that due to lack of funds at this point, there is no proposal to look for a new alignment but study is being conducted to correct the design fault at on spot.
The NHA chairman informed that presently the authority is working on Rs600 billion highway projects out of which some are nearing completion while the others will be completed within one or two years time.
About the issue of overloading on highways, he said that due to this phenomenon road damage ratio in Pakistan is much higher as most of the weigh stations on the national highways are operational. He said that even if they are working, imposition of fine serves no purpose because the truckers already charge additional fare for over-loaded goods. The answer to this problem is to unload the quantity of goods beyond approved weight and for this purpose warehouses would be set up near the weigh stations.