ISLAMABAD: The under-construction parking plaza in Blue Area has missed the extended deadline and now the Capital Development Authority has set a new deadline of March 2024 for its completion.

However, the civic agency has not started the process to award contracts of two other plazas which it had announced last year.

Work on Blue Area parking plaza near Savour Food worth Rs1.3 billion is being carried out by National Logistics Cell (NLC).

The project was started in March last year and supposed to be completed by March 2023. Later, the deadline was extended to September 30, which has also lapsed. However, now work is in progress at full pace to meet the new deadline.

Work picks up pace to meet new deadline of March 2024, says official

“This project should be completed on priority basis as a portion of the service road is also closed because of the ongoing work,” said a motorist, Raja Ali.

He, however, said that once completed the project will provide a big relief to motorists as getting parking space in Blue Area has become a highly difficult task.

The plaza will have a basement plus ground and six storeys and will have the capacity to accommodate 900 cars and 150 motorcycles.

CDA officials said that the plaza faced delay in completion and missed the deadline because of the crossing of a big nullah from the project site as the contractor took many months to fix the issue of slush and running water.

Meanwhile, sources said slow release of funds was also one of the reasons behind the slow progress of work. However, they added that now the work continued with full pace.

Last year, the CDA had decided to construct two other plazas, one each in I-8 Markaz and in F-8. But no serious step was taken for early start of the work.

Parking has become one of the major issues in the city. The available parking space is shrinking and causing problems for motorists almost in all major shopping centres of the city, particularly in Blue Area and all other main marakiz of Islamabad.

In the past, the CDA instead of constructing multi-storey parking plazas had built two underground parking spaces in Jinnah Super Market. But those parking lots could not be utilised properly even though millions of rupees were spent on their construction.

CDA officials Dawn spoke to pointed out that besides massive increase in the number of vehicles during the last two decades, poor implementation of bylaws and ill-planning were the contributing factors behind this issue.

They said parking spaces had been designed in markets and plazas in accordance with a number of shops, but with the passage of time shop owners violated the layout plan by increasing the number of shops.

Similarly, in commercial buildings at marakiz, adequate parking space should have been made in basements. Moreover, the number of shops has also increased in all the class-three shopping centres (neighbourhood markets).

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2023