PESHAWAR : A bridge of Rs 10 billion Mardan- Sawabi dual carriageway project in Khyber Pukhtunkhaw (KPK) has collapsed even before formal inauguration of the road.
Kohati bridge of the Mardan- Swabi road collapsed during normal traffic the other day. Fortunately, no human lives loss occured as the bridge collapsed in the daylight making the commuters alert of the incident in time.
A photo of the collapsed Mardan- Swabi bridge on double road was taken by Tariq Akbar, a freelance journalist, soon after it’s collapse and contributed to NEWSMAN.
The vehicles stopped on the road closed to the collapsed bridge could be seen in the photo.
There were media reports highlighting the use of substandard material in the construction of the project, but it remained unnoticed as the project falls in the constituency of National Assembly speaker, Asad Qaisar.
The situation of other infrastructure- related projects costing the national exchequer billions of rupee is not different to Kohati bridge as there is hardly any project in the province where the concerned departments were having proper monitoring.
A senior official in KPK government told this correspondent that it’s corruption which currently rules in development projects undertaken in the province and this culture was compromising quality of construction of the projects as was evident from collapse of Kohati bridge at Mardan- Sawabi double road
Till filing of these reports, it was not clear as if the National Highways Authority (NHA) whose minister, Murad Saeed , comes from the same province, has initiated any inquiry into the case of collapse of Kohati bridge or not.
This correspondent made desperate attempts to reach out to Murad Saeed, the minister for Communication, to have his views on the case, but he was not available on his cell no made available for public in his google profile .
