Nato supplies wrecking the highways big time: minister Filed under ( International News ) by Sara

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Communication Dr Arbab Alamgir Khan on Friday informed the Senate that National Highway Authority (NHA) has suffered Rs.40 billion losses due to overloaded containers of NATO-ISAF during the last two years.

In response to various supplementary questions raised by senators during Question Hour, he said that the NHA road network could not bear overloaded containers supplying goods and oil to the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

He said the NATO containers were being transported through Karachi-Chaman and Karachi-Torkham routes.

The minister said that several letters were written to NATO to pay for repairing these routes but so for there was no response from their side.

To another question, he said that overloading is a big problem resulting billion of rupees loss to the national exchequer. Overloading is an offence under Motor Vehicle Ordinance 1965, however, he said unfortunately it could not be implemented so far.

The minister stressed the need to formulate a policy for converting over 130,000 one-axle trucks into multiple axles and control overloading in the country. He said that challan tickets to 23,298 vehicles were issued during the last year.

The minister said that the government had allocated Rs.37 billion for construction of roads in the current budget out of which Rs.14 billion has been released to NHA so far.

He said that currently NHA is implementing projects worth Rs.700 billion across the country which could not be financed at once. The government priorities projects due to paucity of funds, he said.

Arbab Alamgir said that the government had slashed 50 per cent of NHA budget last year due to financial constraints. To another question, he said that Rs.9 billion has been allocated for construction of roads in Balochistan.

He said that NHA has undertaken construction of seven road development projects since 2009 each in Larkana and Multan districts. Five projects have been taken in district Larkana which would be completed by July next year, he said.

The minister said 91 development projects and 1385 repair contracts were awarded in different provinces at a cost of Rs.118,158.311 million and 23,019.312 million respectively during the fiscal year 2008-10.

He said that NHA is constructing Gwadar-Turbat-Hoshab (M-8) in three packages. However, he said that work on these projects has been delayed due to paucity of funds, enhancement in scope and extremely adverse law and order situation.

Meanwhile law minister, Moula Bakhsh Chandio told the House that 2,596 persons were presently working in law ministry and its sub-ordinate offices. (APP)