LANDI KOTAL: The expansion and repair of Peshawar-Torkham Highway is near completion as the builders have accelerated work on the project to cover the delay caused by frequent traffic jams on the road.

Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), which has been tasked with the rebuilding this important 44-kilometre road, has divided the entire highway from Karkhano Market checkpost up to Torkham border into seven sections out of which 21 kilometres of the rebuilt road has been opened to traffic.

FWO spokesman retired Major Haseenullah told Dawn during a visit to various portions of the road that a major portion of the highway up to Landi Kotal, approximately 34 kilometres would be completed by the end of this year while the remaining 10 kilometres road up to the border point would also be completed in the shortest possible time.

He, however, said that they had to reduce the number of bridges from 14 to only six owing to paucity of funds. He said that contrary to initial estimates of the project, a huge sum of money was eaten up by ‘structure work’ which included building of culverts for rainwater drainage, retaining walls and protection walls at some portions of the highway.

Major portion of the road to be completed by the end of this year

The government of United States had sanctioned $67 million for the entire project in 2012. Work on the road was started in November 2012 that had to be completed in 18 months. An additional $10 million were later released when local people pressed for the construction of all the 14 bridges on the road.

Mr Haseenullah said that three major bridges at Sur Kamar, Kafar Tangi and Katta Kushtha would be opened by the end of September while the remaining three would be completed till November.

“We have to reduce the number of bridges as the additional funds were utilised for ‘structure work’ and also due to additional expenditures incurred by undesirable delay due to unforeseeable reasons,” he said. He added that road blockade owing to traffic congestion was one of the major causes of delay.

Mr Haseenullah said that they would build 14-kilometre ‘rigid surface’ road, which would have 45 centimetres of concrete thickness with an iron mesh fixed in the middle of concrete structure to make it tougher and weight absorbing.

“Laying down of rigid surface is a rigorous and complicated process and the labourers could lay only 100 metres of the concrete surface during a day as compared to 500 metres of flexible asphalt surface,” Mr Haseenullah said.

He said that extreme care was taken during the mixing of all types of material and his organisation with the assistance of ‘Nespak’ and ‘Ages’ was strictly monitoring every step of the rebuilding and expansion process.

He said that they were optimistic that traffic up to Landi Kotal would be restored on the newly built road by December this year. Major repair work on the remaining Torkham portion of the road will be started in October this year.

Mr Haseenullah said that FWO would look after the road for one year after its handing over to National Highway Authority upon its completion. He said that if the international weight limit of 66 tonnes per vehicle was strictly observed and rules were properly implemented by NHA, the newly built road could last for at least five decades.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2014