KARACHI:
Mauripur Road - the thoroughfare that you must cross on your way to Hawkesbay beach has become a nightmare for commuters. With the restive neighbourhood of Lyari on the one side and heavy traffic dominating the road for most parts of the day and night, people usually refrain from venturing on this particular road, especially after dark.
Choked nullahs, dilapidated pedestrian bridges, stolen grills on the island, truck stands, littered footpaths and broken street lights are what define the famous Mauripur Road.
Even so, this road is of immense value to Karachi. It facilitates the heavy traffic to and from the Karachi port and connects to the Northern Bypass.
This facility, however, comes at a cost as the road is second only to Sharae Faisal in terms of the number of fatal accidents.
Bearing this in mind, the National Highway Authority (NHA), in collaboration with the city administration have announced to rehabilitate the road and make it more user-friendly.
“In the first phase, we are installing street lights on the road, which will hopefully facilitate the traffic flow and help maintain law and order,” said the Karachi commissioner, Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, at the inauguration ceremony. He added that after the installation of street lights, a cleanliness drive for the nullahs will be initiated.
Karachi-1 additional commissioner Muhammad Aslam Khoosa briefed that they planned to install 68 streets lights along the stretch of the road.
“The project will cost Rs7.7 million and it stretches from ICI bridge to Lyari Expressway which covers a distance of 2.2 kilometres,” he added.
In response to a query, Khoosa admitted that the installation of pedestrian bridges and grills on the island was an important task as a large number of accidents took place when the residents tried to cross the road without using pedestrian bridges. “From ICI bridge to Shershah, we have installed two bridges,” he said, adding that there was a dire need to install more bridges.
NHA project director Ghullam Mustafa said that after completion of development work, including the cleanliness drive of the nullahs, the road will be handed over to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, which will carry out more development projects and look after its maintenance.
Mustafa added that street lights will be installed within a month while the other projects such as the cleanliness drive for nullahs, patch work of the street and repairs of pedestrian bridges will be started as soon as possible.
Traffic police DSP Mirza Taymur Baig told The Express Tribune that the road not only needed pedestrian bridges, but demanded further rehabilitation to avoid accidents in the future.
“The illegal parking of trucks, garbage dumps of the KMC and encroachments of restaurants also need attention of the stakeholders,” he stressed.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2014.
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Illegal parking, stolen grills, mugging during traffic jams, illegal use of side streets by restaurants, illegal use of side streets by rangers outside the stadium, etc are some of the problems faced by this road. Breaking of road laws like bikes, cars, rickshaws, etc entering the 1 way traffic at ICI bridge to go to Lyari in front of the Traffic Police shows how corrupt and helpless our police is in front of these open violators of Traffic Laws.
in norway rubish thrown around is cleared after 3 days if found owner he is fined