MIANWALI: There has been a traffic mayhem along Mianwali-Rawalpindi Road in a stretch running down Dhak mountains for two days after a truck overturned and blocked the road.

A long queue of vehicles -- mostly trucks and passenger buses -- can be seen on either side of the road starting from Musakhel to Rikhi. The road is used by traffic from Karachi to Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Azad Kashmir.

Traffic jams on this ascending hilly track have been an issue for quite sometime because its slopes with narrow turns become traps for loaded vehicles. Traffic police, highway and district government departments have no such heavy cranes to remove the overturned vehicles.

Whenever a vehicle is overturned, the owner has to arrange a crane to remove it and restore the traffic.

A new road is under construction to minimise the ascending stretch but traffic jams on the existing road disturb the pace of work as with closure on traffic on the existing road, vehicles turn to the under-constructed road.

Contractor of the new road Mian Mohammad Khan told Dawn that the work was to be completed on June 30, 2017 but viewing public inconvenience from frequent closures on the road, he had accelerated the work pace and the road would be completed in a couple of months.

By Wednesday evening, local police and traffic personnel were trying to clear the road at Dhak mountains for cars and buses and efforts were on to remove the overturned vehicle.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2016