Bhogiwal Road awaits construction

LAHORE: The construction of Bhogiwal Road, which links Bund Road to the GT Road, remains pending since September 9, 2008 – the day Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif inaugurated it.

Ijaz Ali Khan, a Bhogiwal resident, told The Express Tribune that while inaugurating the road project Sharif had promised that the construction would be complete in a year. He added that the CM had also announced that the construction contract had been awarded to the FWO.

The departments concerned have so far failed to fix the responsibility for the delay. The Lahore Development Authority (LDA) has announced that it has contracted out the construction work to the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO). It has further claimed that construction has begun.

An LDA chief engineer told The Express Tribune that the construction has been underway since July 13. “The recent rains may have caused the work to stop temporarily. It would resume soon and will be completed in a year’s time.”

The FWO has, however, rejected this claim stating that though the government asked them to start construction no written contract has yet been signed.

“Unless everything – including rules and regulations and terms of the contract – is known the work cannot begin,” an FWO spokesperson said.He said that the government was in a hurry and wanted the FWO to start work without a written contract, which it said would be signed once the work is underway.

Besides, he added that the government had yet to clear the site of the PTCL, Sui gas and telecom infrastructure.

He further said that the NESPAK had still not finalised the design of the road. “Initially, it was planned that the road would be cemented and widened. But fearing a popular backlash from demolitions along the road, the plan was dropped,” he said.

The spokesperson added that the NESPAK had later come up with a reinforced cement concrete (RCC) model for the road. But before the construction can get underway a three-feet wide drain has to be constructed on both sides, he said.

He said that earlier the FWO and the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) had jointly laid down a trunk sewer and several 12 inches to 72 inches-diameter secondary sewers and constructed a lift station at the Gujjarpura Drain, passing through the site for Bhogiwal Road, in 2009 under a valid contract. He said that some people may have misunderstood and believed that the project included road construction as well.

The construction of the 3.4 kilometre-long Bhogiwal Road (from Bund Road near the Chhota Ravi to the GT Road near the University of Engineering and Technology) was one of the campaign promises of the PML-N candidate in NA 123 by-poll, Pervaiz Malik, Faisal Ali, a shopkeeper in the area, told The Express Tribune.

He said that ahead of the election, the government intensified its ‘infrastructure rehabilitation plan’. He said that nine roads were built in the constituency at a cost of Rs62 million. Malik vowed to get the Bhogiwal Road constructed, he added.

Naghmana, an elderly resident of the area, complained, “They dug the whole road to lay down a sewage pipe and then abandoned it without undertaking necessary repairs,” she said. The road has developed cracks everywhere and turns to a rain water pond after every downpour.

The Bhogiwal Road is part of the Lahore Road Rehabilitation Project (Part II) initiated in 2008.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2010.