Comment
Tariq Saeed
The fate of the much criticized Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project again appears to be in doldrums as the Government is not going to complete the project this year as was earlier promised by the KP Chief Minister.
While the CM Mehmood Khan had some times back pledged to complete the mega project , involving over seventy billion rupees funds, in the end of this year saying there will be further delay, the provincial Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai declared on the Wednesday project will be completed somewhere in 2020. He failed to give a specific time frame.
Hence BRT, that was initially planned to be completed in the tenure of former Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, is destined to suffer another delay, as the province’s information minister, Shaukat Yousafzai, refused to give a definite date of project completion.
Next fiscal year was the response of the Information Minister Yousafzai during a press conference on Wednesday. But when asked to specify which month, or even which season, he just laughed and said next fiscal year. “This year is almost over,” he laughed.
The deadline was initially March, but it was then pushed to December. At the speed, the project is going, there seems like a long way to go before any significant progress is made.
It was none else but Shaukat Yousafzai who had announced on first October that the project will be completed by the end of 2019 adding the provincial government had made mistake by making the announcement for the completion of BRT project within six months. It may be recalled that the Mega project BRT which cost has swelled to over 70 billion rupees from 40 billion has been subjected to sharp criticism both from the masses , opposition parties as well as the experts besides the business community over “ faulty design, ill planning and ill timing that has led to unnecessary delay besides charges of huge kickbacks which the government rubbished every time.
While the Prime Minister Imran Khan had also taken serious notice of the delay in the completion of the first Mega project of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa initiated in the previous government of PTI led by Pervez Khattak , the incumbent Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had directed on May 12 to work day and night for completion of the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project.
Sources say the Peshawar Development Authority still hasn’t paid the contractors working on the project, compounding the delays. Reports are also coming in of funds not being given for the project. Initially planned and hoped to be completed before the general elections 2018, the BRT project has seen over half a dozen deadlines for completion since then.
This state of affairs is bound to providing an opportunity to the already hostile opponents of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf to exploit the situation to the maximum extent.
