Sinking in: Repairs to depressed Ring Road underway

[Salman]

Sinking in: Repairs to depressed Ring Road underway


LAHORE:

The National Logistics Cell is reworking sections of the Lahore Ring Road that sunk because of faulty construction work, resulting in long queues for traffic heading towards the Defence Housing Authority.

The NLC began work on Package 12, between Mahmood Booti and Gowala Colony, of the Ring Road about two months ago. Workers have been leaving one lane open for traffic while they work on the rest of the road.

“This particular section is not an example of quality work by the contractor,” said Jawad Rafique Malik, the Lahore commissioner and project director for the Ring Road.

Before the Ring Road was built, this section was a mud track with depressions on either side. Malik said that the contractor, a company called Putfarajevo based in Bosnia, had not filled in enough mud or levelled the road properly. As a result, parts of the road have depressed due to heavy traffic.

The contractor had not been fully paid, said the commissioner, “although I am facing immense pressure from the ambassador to release the remaining payment”.

He said that the amount spent on revamping Package 12 would be deducted from the money due to the contractors. “The contractor failed to fill the land with the required quantity of mud before constructing the road. We chose the NLC to restructure the patch and bring it up to the standard of the rest of the Ring Road,” he said.

There have also been complaints about the quality of the service lanes, though Malik said these were unfounded. “The service lanes are not of the same quality as the main road, but they’re not bad,” he said, adding that they had suffered extra wear and tear from heavy vehicles that used them while parts of the road were being worked on.

The NLC is also expected to win the contract to collect tolls on the Ring Road, for which it would get paid 15 per cent of the tax. The rest of the money would be used for repairs to the road.

Malik said that since the road was fairly new, there was no need for major maintenance. He said that the construction of other parts of the Ring Road was underway and there was enough money to complete them.

The Ring Road was opened for traffic in phases from 2009, with the formal inauguration of the Northern Loop occurring in early 2010, when Turkish President Abdullah Gul visited Lahore and opened an interchange named after him.