Motorway obsession

This refers to the article, ‘CPEC confusion…army’s failure’ (January 12) by Ayaz Amir. The writer has correctly pointed out that “everything (related to the project) has been hidden behind a veil of secrecy”. If the objective of the project was to provide transit facilities to China, our priority should have been to remove the bottlenecks close of its endpoints, ie, Khunjerab and Gwadar. In the meantime, the commerce ministry should have made trade forecasts and the NHA carried out the road capacity and traffic analysis.

The need for constructing eastern or western routes would arise when the capacity of the existing links is exhausted. But nothing of the sort has been done. Rather priority has been given to the Lahore-Multan and Multan-Sukkur sections of the Lahore-Karachi Motorway – areas that already have numerous rail and road links and where there is no shortage of capacity. If there were any potential of transit trade with China, the Karachi Port with the existing rail network from Hasan Abdal to Karachi could have been used easily and at less cost than road transport. It seems the CPEC is being used to satisfy the lust for motorways.

Abdul Majeed

Islamabad