BRT: not this year, at least

It’s a riddle nobody can answer, a puzzle nobody can solve, and a nut too hard to crack. Yes, we are talking about the long-pending Peshawar BRT project. Deadlines after deadlines have passed, but the rapid bus transport system has yet to come into existence and provide modern facilities of commute to the citizens of the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. What was to be the PTI’s showcase project in the 2018 election campaign has failed to see the light of the day even two years after the elections that resulted in the Imran Khan-led party retaining power in K-P, besides forming governments in Punjab province and at the Centre.

The bus project had been launched in October 2017 with April 2018 slated as the completion date. However, the K-P government missed this deadline. Thereafter, the provincial government kept changing the deadlines – first to June 30, 2018 and then to Dec 31, 2018 and March 23, 2019. All this while, the cost of the project swelled to Rs66.43 billion from the initial Rs49 billion due to the frequent design changes, and then to Rs70.7 billion to account for Rs4.2 billion cost overrun. The delay in the completion of the project had led to the Peshawar High Court ordering a corruption a NAB probe on a slew of pleas by Peshawar residents in July 2018. But the K-P government approached the Supreme Court which stayed the probe in September 2018.

In yet another missed deadline, the provincial government had hinted at inaugurating the project on 14th August. However, now it looks as if Chief Minister Mahmood Khan government has realised that they should not count their chickens before they hatch. Thus, the CM has set himself a new, comfortable deadline. According to a report in this newspaper, provincial government’s spokesperson Shaukat Yousafzai has said that the project will be opened in 2021. This means that a BRT ride is not possible this year, at least.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 29^th, 2020.

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