The BRT puzzle

Deadline after deadline has passed, but the Peshawar BRT has yet to come into existence. Work on the project goes on and on, but mysteriously never ends. Launched in October 2017, the bus-based mass transit project was supposed to complete before the July 2018 general election. While the project has already been delayed by a year and a half, no end of work seems in sight on what was to be the PTI’s showcase project meant to win votes. The project has rather evolved into an endless tale of ineptitude, inefficiency, lack of technical common sense, and corruption of sorts. Why the project has yet to see the light of day is a riddle nobody can answer, a puzzle nobody can solve, and a nut too hard to crack.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government hopes to launch the project by year end, but the latest progress on the pace of work — just six per cent in the last six months i.e. from May to October — is rather a source of hopelessness for the residents of Peshawar who have been waiting and waiting to see the trenches and the ditches on roads filled up, the surrounding pathways concreted, the mud and muck settle down, and the BRT wheels start rolling. Besides causing civic miseries to the residents, the delay in the completion of the project has also resulted in cost overruns — from Rs50 billion to Rs68 billion — something that will only be felt at the public purse.

Last July, the ABD — which is the major financier of the project having loaned $335 million, or Rs53 billion — had pointed out “critical deficiencies” as regards the design of the project, the quality of work therein, and inadequate construction supervision and communication. Now, the lending bank has been tasked by the provincial government with solving the BRT puzzle — i.e. to find out reasons for the painfully long delay. It’s indeed time to fix responsibility for action.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2019.

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