KARACHI: Mayor Waseem Akhtar has demanded that Southern Bypass and Lyari Expressway be completed immediately so that heavy vehicles and goods carriers could go out of the city without passing through and affecting the city’s traffic.

Talking to transporters during his visit to the Mauripur truck stand on Sunday, he said the two road projects had been conceived several years

ago to avoid traffic congestion in the city by upcountry-bound heavy vehicles.

The mayor said the transport department was with the government but unfortunately it had not yet approached the transporters, who had been on strike for a few days after a ban imposed by the Sindh High Court on the movement of heavy vehicles within the city’s jurisdiction.

He regretted that although the government collected billions of rupees from the city, it did not want to spend even a penny on the improvement of its infrastructure.

He pointed out that globally separate roads were constructed for heavy traffic, but here such projects were not given a priority which resulted in long delays in their implementation.

Mr Akhtar said that a large number of containers remained stuck at the Karachi Port and finished products lying in the godowns of thousands of factories in six industrial zones in the city could not be supplied and transported to their destinations, causing losses of billions of rupees to the consignees and transporters, as well as to the national exchequer in terms of taxes.

He said that regardless of the fact that which party did he belong to, he was mayor of the city and it was a problem of the city and that was why he had come to express solidarity with the transporters and would try his best to resolve the issue. He said he wanted a long-term and permanent solution to the problem.

The mayor said that a committee was being formed in which one or two representatives of transporters would also be included so that it could submit its recommendations to the court and an amicable solution addressing reservations of all stakeholders could be found, says a statement.

Member National Assembly Suleman Baloch, transporters’ rep­resen­­tatives Malik Shahzad, Noor Khan and others also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2017