Federal Minister for Communications Hafiz Abdul Karim has stressed upon the need of undertaking joint efforts with sincerity for earlier completion of the communications projects that would ultimately put country on the road to development. He was presiding over briefing session at Ministry of Communications held here on Tuesday, participated by Minister of State for Communications Muhammad Junaid Anwaar Chaudhry, Parliamentary Secretary for Communications Mr. Alamdad Lalika, Federal Secretary for Communications Muhammad Siddique Memon, Chairman NHA Shahid Ashraf Tarar and IG NH&MP Shaukat Hayat.
In his address, Hafiz Abdul Karim said, communications schemes play key role in socio economic uplift of the country and their timely and quality construction stands among our priorities. He desired to remove the technical difficulties in way of public welfare projects. He assured that Ministry of Communications will extend all possible cooperation for communications development projects. He asked the heads of the attached departments of Ministry to utilize all the available resources for strengthening their departments. He recalled that the NH&MP is an exemplary department and the need is to maintain its status of excellent service.
Giving briefing Chairman NHA Shahid Ashraf Tarar said, basic objective of the NHA is to construct and maintain environmental friendly national highway, motorways, expressways and strategic roads and to provide safe and sound journey to the road users. Presently, he said, NHA is controlling 49 highways with total length of 13127 km, which is the only 5% of the total road network of the country. But, he informed, that 80% commercial traffic is attached to NHA’s network. Continuing he said, only Karachi-Lahore-Peshawar national highway (N-5) passing through three provinces handles 65% of the trade activity of the country. He said, about Rs. 320 billion have been allocated for NHA in the running financial year. Speaking about the bidding process of NHA, he said, due to transparency and participants of private sector in national highways projects, a considerable saving amounting to Rs. 482 billion have been made. Out of 13x motorway projects he said, 11 projects are in the construction stage while two projects i-e- Faisalabad-Gojra and Khanewal-Multan Motorways have been completed. During the last three years, 2500 km highways have been added to the NHA network. NHA is also focusing on road building in Balochistan. He said, during the last four years NHA not only revived the sick projects but some of them have been completed and grand Lowari Tunnel stands among such projects which has been opened to traffic, while Lyari Expressway in Karachi is likely to be completed in October 2017.
Inspector General National Highways and Motorways Police Shaukat Hayat told that prime objectives of the NH&MP is to regulate and control traffic on motorways and national highways, help people and commuters in distress, issuance of international standards driving licenses and coordinate with the NHA for provision of adequate road furniture. In all the administrative affairs, top priority is attached to the merit, he added.
The Federal Minister was also briefed about the trade agreements of Pakistan with neighboring countries and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.