After two decades, Kahuta Road still in shambles

Despite repeated promises and announcements by successive governments for its improvement, Kahuta Road, which is also known as the Sihala Road –the easiest and the shortest possible route to travel Azad Kashmir from Rawalpindi– has been lying a state of dilapidation for the past two decades.

Every political party which formed government in the centre as well as in the province during the last two decades has failed to start the project of carpeting, expanding and widening this important thoroughfare.

The oldest and the largest training college of police in Pakistan, Punjab Police College Sihala – which provides training to all the police officials of all ranks of the Punjab police – is also located on this road. The police recruits and officers from all four provinces of the country come to this institute for professional training.

Further, the state-of-the-art Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) and the Sihala Railways Crossing are also situated at this route, increasing this road's significance.

The successive governments of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Inasf and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who also completed a hat trick of successes from this constituency, could not live up to their promises of paving and upgrading this 38-kilometre-long road into a two-way thoroughfare.

The local people who frequently travel by this road say that it is so broken that deep potholes have formed in it. “A foot of water accumulates in them during the rains and this road presents a view of ponds at different places in which children bathe,” they said.

According to sources, the project of Kahuta Road’s expansion, dualisation and making it traffic signal-free has been delayed for more than two decades now. In the beginning, its estimated cost was Rs350 million, which has now increased to Rs1 billion.

Further, the estimated cost of the Sihala Crossing underpass project has also increased from over Rs480 million to Rs1 billion. The underpass and flyover project was supposed to be completed by March 2022, but it has not even started yet.

Sources said former PTI MNA Sadaqat Abbasi and former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi only cut the ribbons of these projects, attended the photo sessions and never looked back to find out the progress of work.

They said about 350,000 vehicles pass through this road every day and the journey which should otherwise not take more than 40 minutes to complete is covered in more than one and a half hours.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2023.