Consultant hired for Ammar Shaheed Chowk underpass

CCB awards contract for supervision of designing process

RAWALPINDI:

The project for construction of an underpass at Ammar Shaheed Chowk has inched forward with the grant of consultancy contract.

The Chaklala Cantonment Board (CCB) as the executing agency has decided to award the contract of consultancy to the Directorate of Design and Consultancy (DDC). Upon completion of the procedure, the company qualifying for technical and financial bids will be awarded a regular contract of Rs24.9 million as per the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) Rules.

DDC will submit consultancy detailed design and resident supervision report within one month while the whole project will be completed in nine months. According to CCB officials, DDC won the contract competition between two prequalified companies DDC GHQ Rawalpindi and Purine Consulting Engineering. Punjab government has released Rs500 million to CCB for the cost of the project.

The final cost of the project will be determined by the project concept one (PC-I) upon receipt of the consultancy report. Earlier, the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) had prepared a consultancy report on the proposed project four years ago; however, as no progress was made on the project, the project was transferred from RDA to CCB. The RDA had been working on the project for the past 12 years but has yet to see it get off the ground.

Struck off from the annual development programme for the fiscal year 2019-20, but deemed indispensable for getting rid of multiple traffic issues in the city, RDA, the top civic agency of Rawalpindi had formally requested the provincial government to hand over the project to CCB The construction of underpass and remodelling of Ammar Shaheed Chowk will allow signal free movement of traffic coming from GT Road, Kachehri Chowk, Chaklala Scheme III, Benazir Bhutto Airport, Koral Chowk and other adjoining areas.

The signal free intersection will allow smooth flow of traffic and help save time of commuters. As per the project design, a proposal is being considered to build an underpass at Kacheri Chowk, which will accommodate over 100,000 vehicles on a daily basis. Construction of an underpass here will allow traffic to flow smoothly without causing any disruptions. Owing to increasing traffic congestion in the city, the project was termed inevitable five years ago however it got mired in delays and was limited only to a feasibility study prepared in 2013. In 2017, the Planning and Development (P&D) Department Punjab included the project in its priority list.

However it remained unapproved due to unidentified reasons. The sources said that interest shown by the prime minister in the project had raised hopes that it would see some progress in the near future. The intersection project, after completion, will ensure smooth flow of traffic from Rawalpindi district courts to Islamabad Airport and onward to Koral Chowk through Ammar Shaheed Chowk and from Koral Chowk to Lahore, Islamabad and Chaklala.