Ring Road project pre-bid meeting on Apr5

Official says process of disbursing payment to landowners has been accelerated

RAWALPINDI:

Rawalpindi Commissioner Capt (retd) Muhammad Mehmood has said that a pre-bid meeting for the Rawalpindi Ring Road Project (RRRP) would be held on April 5.

A Commissioner Office spokesman said two representatives of each company submitting tenders for the project had been invited. However, in view of the coronavirus SOPs, the companies would attend the meeting via video link.

A notification of the committee reviewing the tenders would be issued this week. The Communications and Works Department, UET Taxila, NUST and CDA have sent their nominations for the committee.

A committee comprising officers of various departments would be set up to review grievances of any of the companies participating in the tenders. He said that a detailed tour of the track of the Rawalpindi Ring Road project would also be arranged for the companies participating in the bidding process.

The process of disbursing payment to owners whose land was acquired for Rawalpindi Ring Road was under way and had been accelerated, he added.

He said 52 percent payment had been made for land acquired in Attock district while 32 percent amount had been paid for land acquired in Rawalpindi district, while efforts were being made to expedite the process in the coming days. The RRRP tenders would be opened on April 12. The spokesman said an NOC for Rawalpindi Ring Road was required from 30 departments and agencies, of which, 26 had been obtained while NOCs from the remaining four departments were awaited.

Two days ago, a group of people likely to be affected by the Rawalpindi Ring Road project staged a protest on Grand Trunk (GT) Road seeking realignment of the mega project.

The protesters said they will block the GT Road if the government continued to ignore their concerns about the project that was expected to put many villages, graveyards, agricultural land and orchards under tarmac.

The Ring Road affectees standing on the side of GT Road said that as of now, their protest demonstration was symbolic, however, a heavy contingent of the police reached the site to prevent any untoward incident.

The demonstrators said that the project would destroy their ancestral lands while dozens of families would become homeless. The protesters complained that the government had fixed extremely low prices for their arable lands which were not acceptable.

The provincial government has set the compensation of Rs69,000 to Rs350,000 per Kanal as per the location of the property which will go under the highway and the projects planned along with it. The people affected by the project have the right to challenge the official assessment before a civil judge and file an application for reassessment.

However, the protestors said the Rawalpindi commissioner had lent a deaf ear to the reservations of the people affected by the project. The protesters said that they would stage a protest by blocking GT Road from Rawat if the demands were not fulfilled.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2021.