Islamabad: Cash-strapped CDA puts off safety audit of city roads

[Naveed Yaseen]

ISLAMABAD: The cash-strapped Capital Development Authority (CDA) has put off the safety audit of roads of the federal capital owing to the severe financial meltdown hitting it for about a year, prompting it to shelve several development projects. “The project is still on the card. We just put it off for an indefinite period. The project is of utmost importance so shelving it would not be a wise decision,” said a senior CDA official. He said the concerned directorate was preparing the PC-II of the project when previous chairman of the authority, Tariq Mehmood, directed to postpone it, given the fact that the civic body was not in financial capacity to afford the project. The CDA official said according to the PC-I, the project was to incur Rs 20 million and it would be pre-mature to say how much time the project would take to complete. He said the objective of the safety audit of the capital’s roads was to identify issues for safety of road users as well as highways and it is a formal safety performance examination by an independent audit team. “It is the evaluation of a highway scheme during design and at the end of construction to identify potential road safety problems,” said the official. He said an independent team of trained specialists, whose findings including potential safety problems were documented in a report to assist the concerned department to incorporate findings in future projects, would execute the project. “Though we continue examining the road safety on our level, but, there should be an independent auditor to check and suggest latest and safety features to bring Islamabad roads at par with international standards,” he said. “Highway design, traffic safety, human factors, accident reconstruction, enforcement, road signage, safe curving, turns and intersections would feature the safety audit,” said the official. He said the project would minimize risk of a traffic crash and ensure all the measures to eliminate or reduce traffic problems besides promoting safety of road users. app

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