Swat Expressway: Precautionary measures urged to avoid accidents

PESHAWAR: Extra precautionary measures are being taken to avoid accidents, especially at Palai Mountain on the Swat Expressway, its project driver said.

Engineer Barkatullah, the project director from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Highway Authority (PKHA), said the second defensive line was being erected besides lighting and ramp bar steps on the two sharp curves at Palai.

In a chat with The News, he said road accidents occurred mainly due to overloading and over-speeding by the drivers while driving down the Palai Mountain, where the speed limit was 15 kilometres per hour.

Steel girders are being fixed at the two curves as second defensive line though the roadsides have concrete railings to avoid the fall of vehicles into the ravine, he added. He said work on the expressway was going on smoothly and will be completed by June 2020. The official said that digging on both the auxiliary tunnels (220 meters parallel and another 306 meter tunnel) have been completed and lining work was in progress while the five bridges in the four kilometre area were in the final stages.

To a question, he said there was no delay or slow pace of work by the executing agency but the work was delayed due to non-payment to landowners in Malakand district.

He added that the district administration faced difficulty in acquiring land because of non-release of funds. “The first demand bill of Rs1,835,670,210 was issued on November 20, 2017, a bill of Rs113,097,041 compensation for assets on November 15, 2017, another bill of Rs786,154,716 on January 21, 2018 and the demand bill of Rs845,399,235 for land acquisition on March 9, 2018, for which payment date was October 24, 2018, but the final award was announced on January 17, 2019,” the project director explained.

He informed this scribe that the total compensation amount was Rs2,919.333,364 million, adding that the work could not be carried out without paying money to the landowners.

The official said sufficient land has been acquired for extension of the present four-lane expressway in future as well as for service road. The project director was confident that the Swat Expressway would be completed by June this year as work was being carried out in three shifts without any break. “Along with work execution, an awareness campaign for drivers is also being run to ask drivers to adopt precautionary measures while driving on the expressway by avoiding overloading and over-speeding,” he stated. Barkatullah said work on the Chakdara Interchange, the endpoint of Swat Expressway, was also in full swing and a flyover was being constructed as the crossing point for the existing road.