RAWALPINDI, Oct 24: Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Friday laid the foundation stone of the multi-billion rupee Elevated Expressway project to ease traffic movement on the city’s arterial road.

The plan was also announced by former railway minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, whose another key initiative – Leh Expressway – had been abandoned halfway after this year’s change of government in Punjab.

The Elevated Expressway costing Rs16 billion would be built over Benazir Bhutto Road from Flashman’s Hotel to Faizabad, stretching over nine kilometres.

Speaking to a public gathering after laying the foundation stone, the Punjab chief minister promised that the project would be completed in 18 months, and directed the contractor to ensure his commitment.

Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), which was earlier engaged in constructing Sheikh Rashid’s Leh Expressway, has been given the mega contract unilaterally, as no tender has been floated for the qualification of a contractor.

Mr Sharif said the project was conceived in 1997, adding that it would have been completed much earlier had a military dictator not overthrown the democratically-elected government of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

“It was my dream to launch a series of development projects in Punjab by taking the start from Rawalpindi.

The people of this district have rejected the supporters of dictators that is why I respect Rawalpindi and its people,” he told the public gathering.

He criticised the former rulers of Punjab for ‘underestimating Rawalpindi’ and pledged that the present government would leave no stone unturned regarding development of the district.

On the occasion, he also directed the elected representatives, including MNAs and MPAs, to monitor uplift activities in their respective areas and to regularly coordinate with the government departments.

The chief minister restricted his speech to criticising the policies of the former president Pervez Musharraf, adding that the retired general “ruined his own country by pleasing the US”.

Engineering experts and officials on the occasion told this reporter that the approach to be followed in the construction of the Elevated Expressway would be similar to that of the Leh Expressway project, as both projects aimed at resolving traffic congestion in the city.

An expert, who was earlier engaged in the execution of the Leh Expressway project, told Dawn that had the Leh Expressway project been pursued and completed, it would have put an end to the threats of floods in Rawalpindi city. He regretted that over Rs800 million spent on the project so far had gone to waste.

It is significant to note that the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA), which would execute the new mega project, is without a permanent director general since the Punjab government removed retired military officers from the civil institutions.

The authority is being headed by Director Metropolitan Engineering Makeen Shahbaz for the last seven months, as the Punjab government has not yet appointed a permanent chief of the city’s top civic agency.