Proposal for Karachi's Hawkesbay Expressway sent to Chinese govt

Mayor says expressway will help end traffic jams on Mauripur Road caused by movement of trailer trucks

KARACHI:

The proposal for the construction of Hawkesbay Expressway along Mauripur Road has been sent to the Chinese government for approval, a Chinese delegation told Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar on Wednesday.

The mayor was presiding over a meeting attended by the Chinese delegation.  The expressway will be constructed with the assistance of the Chinese government.

Akhtar said Hawkesbay Expressway would provide much-needed relief to commuters who had to put up with traffic jams on Mauripur Road every day caused by the movement of trailer trucks.

"This project will allow citizens easy access to the coastal belt and the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) will assist in every way for this purpose," he added.

Akhtar said he wanted to take all all stakeholders on board including the provincial government for the project.

He instructed the director technical to help the Chinese delegation in its preparations for the project.

The members of the delegation said they had arranged the required investment on a Government-to-Government basis and the project's proposal had been sent to the Chinese government for approval.

It was decided that the mayor would ask the governor to hold a meeting with all stakeholders including the federal and provincial governments so that everybody's interests could be protected.

The Mauripur Road leads to two under-construction nuclear power plants near Paradise Point with a cumulative capacity of 2200MW.

They are expected to start producing electricity by the end of 2018.

Located near the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP)-1, the two power plants have been named KANUPP-2 and KANUPP-3 and are being constructed as a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project at a cost of over $9 billion.

Besides the delegation, Pak Navy's Capt M Rizwan, representatives of the Private-Public Partnership authorities of the finance department , Municipal Commissioner Dr Asghar Abbas, Financial Adviser Rehan Khan, DG Technical Shahab Anwer, Director Technical SM Shukaib, Sr Director Land Najm uz Zaman and Sr Director MS Nauman Arshad also attended the meeting.