Commissioner for making Tepa functional in Faisalabad

FAISALABAD: Commissioner Saqib Manan has said that all administrative preparations should be made to make the Tepa Faisalabad function like Lahore to solve the traffic challenges.

He said this while reviewing the required resources, issues, Tepa rules, departmental strategy for its functioning and other related matters in a meeting here on Sunday.

FDA Director General Muhammad Sohail Khawaja, MPA/focal person Firdous Rai, Tepa vice chairman Sheikh Irfan, CTO Shahzada Umar Akbar, Director Development Dr Naveed Iftikhar, Metropolitan Corporation Chief Officer Naeemullah Warraich and others also attended the meeting.

The commissioner said that integrated departmental strategy was must to carry out transport planning and other related matters in a comprehensive manner as per future requirements, including installation of traffic signs and traffic education. He said that besides providing other resources, steps would be taken to procure staff for the Tepa from Punjab’s surplus pool. He said that for the success of the Tepa projects and activities, the support of the prominent community of the city should be sought while the future requirements of urban development should be taken into consideration in planning. He directed the MC chief officer to take immediate steps to rectify the bad traffic signals in the city.

The FDA DG informed during briefing that in a 20 years master planning, there was effective management of traffic and transport in addition to taking care of the scope for future planning. He said that the Tepa Faisalabad had prepared 112 projects in the field of road engineering and traffic management, however, there was a lack of funds and staff and other administrative resources for implementation while the Punjab government had requested initially provided a grant of Rs 50 million. He said that it was also proposed to set up a transport board under the Tepa so that concrete planning could be done to provide easy travel facilities to the citizens in consultation.

He said that adoption of Lahore model would make it easier to raise funds for the Tepa for which relevant rules and conditions need to be applied.